


The Metamorphosis Project

by orphan_account



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Anal Sex, Body Horror, Canon - Manga, Enthusiastic Consent, F/F, Fingering, Frottage, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Science Fiction, Shapeshifting, ghoul!Hide, ghoul!Yoriko, memory recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-03-26 02:54:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 20,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3834340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the success of the quinx experiments, doctors at the CCG have developed a new procedure: implantation of a modified kakuhou into humans to create so-called “Shapeshifter Ghouls.” At the same time, Dr. Kanou of the Aogiri Tree is conducting experiments in the same vein. Hide begins work with the Quinx Squad after his success under the Metamorphosis Project at the same time that Yoriko becomes an experimental subject in Kanou’s lab.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kakuja

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slide your legs into its tail I said.  
> I can’t he said as he did.  
> Feed your guts there into its cavity  
> of guts, I can’t he said (manifestly untrue  
> because he did). Mash the thing’s  
> name and yours together into  
> that irreversible hole I know you keep.
> 
> -[ Jon Woodward, “Salamander”](http://therumpus.tumblr.com/post/47798353962/the-janitor-asked-me-how-to-pronounce-the)  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just edited the tags and I wanted to post a few notes and warnings for new readers:
> 
> -The violence tag is for body horror and there is no graphic violence outside of body horror.  
> -The body horror is not sexual in any way.  
> -The fic is explicit at the end of chapter 12.  
> -The "enthusiastic consent" tag is very accurate, I don't go anywhere near noncon ever.
> 
> okay! happy + safe reading!

The procedure required two. 

The organs were only slightly larger than human kidneys and more oval-shaped. Black capillaries grew in a web over their slick, bright-red surfaces. 

Nagachika Hideyoshi’s right kidney had been damaged enough that, while stitching the wounds in his torso, the doctors had simply filled the space where the kidney had been with the first glistening red kakuhou. That kakuhou was what the surgeons had begun to call a “natural kakuhou”: an organ that, between being harvested from the body of a ghoul and being repurposed by the CCG, had not been in any way modified.

The position of the second had been more difficult, especially when paired with the wounds Hide had sustained on the right side of his torso. Beneath the white fluorescent lights of the operating theater, Dr. Shiba had looked at his assisting surgeon over Hide’s lifeless but perfectly-preserved body and commented that it was lucky that the post-raid rescue crews had found the corpse in the tunnels so promptly. Otherwise, the tissue decay may have been too extensive for future experimentation. Without the vacancy left by another damaged organ, the surgeons decided to nestle the second kakuhou between the gallbladder and stomach, just above and to the side of the first. This was a “modified kakuhou”: a new CCG invention. 

The surgeons under the employ of the Commission of Counter-Ghoul had reached a new frontier in ghoul research. The 20th Ward’s Quinx Squad and the Arata project had been only stepping stones. This new initiative, nicknamed the Metamorphosis Project, would surely revolutionize the counter-ghoul war. The engineering of the URC--the unspecialized red child cell produced within the modified kakuhou--could be the weapon the CCG needed to truly infiltrate the ghoul ranks. 

Once inside Hide’s body, the kakuhou performed their own grafting. The doctors joked that the organs were like the ghouls themselves: hungry and quick, in the way the kakuhou immediately fanned out with greedy red kagune tissue to attach themselves to their host’s system. Natural ghouls, of course, had their kakuhou born into them, but any kakuja or experimental half-ghoul or quinx underwent the process of the kakuhou consuming and grafting itself into their internal systems. Within minutes, Hide’s body twitched on the table as his system began flowing for the first time since his death at the Anteiku Raid year previous. This time, Hide’s blood was being directed to the new organs, and red child cells were slipping into his bloodstream. It was truly remarkable, Dr. Shiba mused, what they could do with the living organs of the ghouls. 

The doctors stitched Hide’s body back up. Though he would soon have the accelerated healing characteristic to ghouls, it would take time for his system to adjust both to new life and to the influx in red child cells. Once he had been returned to his room in the hospital, he had been thoroughly sedated and held down by restraints on his ankles, legs, torso, and head for good measure. The greatest risk of the procedure was that Hide was not, in fact, and quinx. His RCC levels would not be controlled by pills and surgeries to slowly acquaint his body to being a ghoul and maintain his humanity. Hide would be, once the kakuhou fully grafted themselves into his system and his RCC levels rose, a kakuja. 

……….

Hide had seen his natural appearance enough to understand what he looked like, but he had been modifying his appearance so often in the previous three months that seeing his own reflection in the mirror was like seeing someone else who looked exactly like him. In the collared shirt and tie he would be wearing at his new job at the CCG, his body was even more foreign after weeks of hospital gowns and then, later, gray training sweats. His hair had been shorn down to a dark stubble before his surgeries, but it had grown out enough that it at least wasn’t sticking straight up. He thought he looked rather military, which, despite the fact that he had no memory of his life before three months previous, did not seem to fit his personality. 

He wasn’t really sure whether this personality he had was his personality, or where it had come from, or whether it was instinctive, or learned, or...fuck, he had no idea. Hide only knew that, once he was lucid enough to talk, the doctors had told him that his name was Nagachika Hideyoshi, and his immediate response was to decide that he should be called Hide. Well, he also seemed to know all the names for things, and the geography of Tokyo, and anything he might have learned in school; however, he did not remember being in school, going to any of the locations in the city, or whether he liked anything. 

Naturally, during his long hours of recovery in the hospital and then ensuing entrapment in an underground CCG facility for “testing” and “observation,” Hide decided to remedy his boredom by watching every single movie he could get his hands on. He soon realized that his favorite genres were horror and romantic comedies. The resulting personality, he thought, was of someone who was perpetually confused and had an encyclopedic knowledge of a very small range of low-quality films but was otherwise boring. 

As a result of his movie habit, Hide’s luggage consisted half of DVDs and half of clothes purchased for him by the CCG. He had found the clothing already arranged carefully in his bedroom closet in the new apartment. His bedroom was really the spare room of another CCG employee: he felt guilty for taking up space in her home when she clearly did not want him to be there, but the CCG had insisted that she was the only one properly qualified to look after him during his first days at the CCG. They couldn’t risk housing a newly-engineered kakuja with inexperienced investigators, regardless of how well his testing had gone. Hide expected that they had bumped up her pay. 

Associate Special Class Mado appeared from her bedroom with her laptop bag over her shoulder and her hair pulled back in a neat bun. She looked Hide over quickly, probably to make sure he didn’t look embarrassing. Hide thought he looked very professional despite needing help tying his tie. 

Mado clipped past Hide towards the door. Hide had only been in the apartment one night and he already knew he was afraid of her. She had run seven miles before Hide even woke up that morning--what the hell was that? Investigator Mado meant business. 

“Nagachika? Are you coming?” she asked from the doorway. Hide scrambled after her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I'd like to send a shoutout to [ Kammy ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kammy/pseuds/Kammy) for inspiring the ghoul Yoriko AU with the lovely fic ["Red Spider Lily"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3757753/chapters/8342557)! Everyone should go read it, leave kudos, and comment wonderful things because it's amazing.
> 
> 2\. I realize it is pretty unrealistic to expect a kakuhou to actually revive a human that's been dead for a year, regardless of how well their body was preserved. On the other hand, this is also a universe in which people with funky colorful tentacles growing out of their backs can grow more tentacles by cannibalizing their buddies. So please consider suspending disbelief on this one. (I needed the timeline to work out and this was the only way I could think to do it.)


	2. The Metamorphosis Project

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _return to the dust,_  
>  because not just anyone can make a monster speak.  
> This is a two-way street.
> 
> -Janice Lee, [ "Kerotakis"](http://janicel.com/?portfolio=kerotakis)

Kanou Akihiro’s notes and laboratory data had been invaluable both in the creation of the Quinx Squad and in the testing of the Metamorphosis Project. It had not been until after the raid on Kanou’s laboratory that the CCG had any idea how to make half-ghouls--whom they would dub “quinxes” for the purpose of respectability--like Kanou had been prototyping for years. The Metamorphosis Project outlined in Kanou’s notes was the obvious next step once the CCG doctors mastered the quinx procedure and the engineers had harnessed the capabilities of the Arata armor system. The Metamorphosis Project was a clever marriage of the two, though Kanou had approached it more like a combination of his half-ghoul procedure with the natural tendency of cannibalistic ghouls to become kakuja.

The logic behind the Metamorphosis Project was simple enough: Kanou had been inspired by the natural adaptability of the red child cells. They could change in color and in form to create the various kagune types; even within the types, there was diversity in shape and color. Why not exploit that capability? 

Despite the basic principle, the procedure was by far the most complicated ever undertaken by the CCG. The first obstacle was the modification of the kakuhou. The natural kakuhou produced red child cells; the modified kakuhou produced unspecialized red child cells. Once implanted in the body of the test subject, the natural kakuhou would create an kagune like those belonging to the quinx squad or any ghoul. The modified kakuhou generated URC, a special kind of red child cell that was not specific to creating the fighting capability of an ordinary kagune. It was the adaptability of the URC cells that allowed them to mimic the appearance and feel of human flesh, cartilage, and hair. The importance of the two kakuhou and triggering the kakuja response was that the URC would armor the entire body of the host to create a thin shell--by controlling their URC kagune, the host could modify their physical appearance at will.

Though the word was not mentioned in any of the official CCG documents concerning the Metamorphosis Project, the doctors had a nickname for their first test subject. They liked to call Nagachika Hideyoshi the “Shapeshifter Ghoul.”

…..

Within the bowels of the 14th Ward, Doctor Kanou Akihiro was developing his own version of the Metamorphosis Project. Once he had created a new and more powerful version of the one-eyed ghoul to replace the one stolen by the horrid and deeply hypocritical Commission of Counter-Ghoul, Kanou had grown bored. With the seizure of his medical archives by the fucking plagiarists at the CCG and the resulting debut of their half-ghoul investigators, Kanou predicted that shapeshifter investigators would be on the way soon. The Aogiri Tree would need a proper weapon to combat them. Of course, his sudden enthusiasm for shapeshifting research was not entirely selfless: he was mostly motivated by the rage of seeing his work stolen and repurposed in such a shoddy and halfhearted manner. 

Thankfully, the hard copies of the files had only been his backups--he saved all of his work digitally in several different locations, because he wasn’t new to the whole “destructive and fatal laboratory raid” business. Even if he hadn’t saved anything, he was certain he would have been able to dredge up every detail of his work and recreate it even better out of pure spite for the Commission of Counter-Ghoul and their laughably amateur surgical team. So Kanou found new test subjects. He worried about liability considerably less than the CCG: rather than progressing through animal testing he immediately began experimenting on humans. 

Kosaka Yoriko was his fourth human test subject and the first to survive two weeks after the surgery. Kanou attributed this relative success partially to his irritation with his previous failures and partially to the remarkable resiliency of the girl’s body. She reminded him of Kaneki Ken, really. 


	3. Reclamation

Mado Akira disabled the RCC scanner gate with a swipe of her CCG keycard--her promotion to Associate Special Class following the raid on the ghoul auction three months previous had come with a few perks. She gestured for Hide to walk through and then followed. Mado wasn’t one to care about the judgements of others, but Hide noticed that a trio of briefcase-wielding investigators crossing the lobby watched him intently. Hide waved nervously. 

Unfortunately, Mado’s promotion hadn’t come with a new, private office. She and her Quinx Squad still shared a cluster of desks in a dim, blue-carpeted office with a broken coffee machine and a view of the CCG’s back parking lot. When Mado and Hide entered the quinx office that morning, someone had tucked the broken coffee machine on a shelf and replaced it with a drip coffee maker. The office smelled like fresh espresso and Hide could hear the quiet plastic-on-plastic click of computer keys. A man sat at a desk across the room; his head was bowed as he typed, but Hide could see his shaggy white hair growing out black at the roots and the pale morning sunlight glinting silver on his round glasses. 

The man looked up and opened his mouth to speak. Before he could greet them, he bunched his eyebrows together like he was trying to remember something. The man was familiar to Hide, too: his gray eyes, delicate nose, and the quizzical tilt of his head to the side struck Hide as belonging to someone he had seen many times before. In fact, to Hide, seeing him was like looking at his own natural reflection in the mirror--familiar and foreign at the same time, like he was missing some essential component of the memory. 

“Nice to meet you,” Hide finally said with a wide grin. The man’s face relaxed and he stood up to greet Hide. “I’m Nagachika Hideyoshi, but that’s long so just ‘Hide’ is fine.” 

“Sasaki Haise,” the man said, and extended his hand. Hide shook it enthusiastically. “So you’re the one who Akira’s been complaining about for the last week?” Sasaki asked with a smile. He cleaned the lenses of his glasses on his tie with long, quick fingers. 

“Sasaki,” Mado scolded. “He’s new. Go easy on him.” She crossed the office to make a cup of coffee, leaving Hide and Haise standing awkwardly by Haise’s desk. 

Sasaki coughed quietly. “The rest of the squad should be in soon. They’re kids and none of them know how to get up before nine,” he said with a fond smile. “This desk here is going to be yours.” Sasaki gestured to the desk nearest his own. Hide noticed that several stacks of paper had begun spilling from the desk onto the carpeted floor. He probably shouldn’t have assumed that his CCG job would be particularly exciting; when it came down to it, much of the investigators’ jobs consisted of paperwork. 

“Thanks!” Hide exclaimed. He sat down at the desk and decided to use the opportunity to surreptitiously examine Sasaki’s desk again. Hide found himself appraising Sasaki instead: he was about Hide’s height, maybe a little shorter, with a slender but muscular build and, Hide couldn’t help but note, a lovely round ass. Fuck it, Sasaki was hot. 

Hide jumped in his seat when the office door slammed open. Two young men barged in followed by a small woman with her gaze fixed on the screen of her phone. None of them seemed to notice Hide’s presence.

“Sassan! You should check your emails,” one of the men exclaimed. He crossed the room to Sasaki’s desk and leaned on it. “We have a new assignment,” he announced. 

…..

Hide wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but he was fairly certain he was having some kind of anxiety attack. The espresso machine behind the counter screamed; the smell of coffee and food and humans and ghouls--several ghouls, including Sasaki right across from him--clogged his nose and throat. Pedestrians chattered outside but Hide couldn’t ignore their conversations: he tried to follow every single one of them, every word--he couldn’t help himself. The bright overhead lights singed his eyes and the crowds outside the windows moved in a churning blur of bodies and then there was the waitress--who the fuck was that waitress? 

When Hide and Sasaki walked in, she had nearly dropped her tray of coffee mugs. Her dark eyes went wide and she stared at them for a full five seconds before signaling to the man behind the counter to help them. But Hide knew he had seen her before many times, and in a coffee shop just like RE. Sasaki, too--Hide recognized him and he recognized him in that coffee shop, which was of course impossible. Hide had never seen Sasaki before that day and he had never been inside RE and he had never seen that waitress and he had definitely never spent hours inside that coffee shop with Sasaki and the waitress so why did he feel like he had lived it before?

“Hide?” Sasaki asked. He tilted his head to the side and watched Hide with concern. Sasaki was just another thing to focus on: his eyes, his face, the way he held his coffee cup, even the familiarity of his walk, and, most of all, his smell. Sasaki smelled like a ghoul, and like coffee and ink, and like something else so familiar that Hide could feel it in his muscles. Hide mentally searched what scant memories he possessed for Sasaki’s smell. His face. His eyes. His hand, raising to cup his chin.

“Kaneki,” Hide blurted. 

“Sorry?” Sasaki asked. He looked at Hide blankly and dropped both of his hands to hold his coffee mug.

“We’ve met before today,” Hide insisted. His eyes had gone wide and he had to stop himself from reaching out and grabbing Sasaki’s hand. 

Sasaki looked just as confused as Hide felt. 

“Have we?” Sasaki asked hesitantly. His hands remained clasped around his mug. 

He didn’t remember. Just like Hide hadn’t.

“Sorry, never mind,” Hide replied. “I was confused.” That, at least, was the truth. Hide needed to investigate the situation and think about it further. He couldn’t do anything with the amount of information he had at that point. 

The familiar waitress passed by their table again. Kirishima Touka. Anteiku. The raid. The sewers. Oh. 

Hide looked back to Sasaki. “I should go,” Hide stammered. He bumped the table with his elbow, coffee splashed across the table, and he cursed loudly. The customers at the nearby tables watched him in surprise.

“Is something wrong?” Sasaki asked in alarm. He stood up and reached out toward Hide, who jumped back and jostled the table again.

“No, it’s nothing. I should get out of here. Thanks for the coffee,” Hide managed as he hurried towards the door. 


	4. Recoil

“So you’re a ghoul now?” Touka asked. She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, and watched Hide with a frown. 

“Oh, yeah. I guess you can smell it,” Hide replied. He nervously combed a hand through his hair. He had waited for Haise to head back towards the CCG offices earlier that day, and then loitered around the area until RE emptied. When Touka came to the door to flip the sign to CLOSED, he had intercepted her and asked to come in. 

“And you remember me?” Touka raised an eyebrow. They sat across from each other at one of the wooden tables close to the counter. Orange sunset washed across the furniture.

“I do! I remember Kaneki, too--or, Sasaki, since that’s the name he goes by now,” Hide explained. “Have you talked to him? Does he remember you?”

“No,” Touka replied tersely. She had cut her hair shorter than Hide remembered. She looked a lot older. She also didn’t set her face by default into a scowl; it was more of a gloomy neutrality.

“I don’t think he remembers me either. Does he remember anything?”

“I don’t think so.” 

“I think they must have wiped our memories,” Hide continued. “The CCG, I mean. Chemically, or something.” Outside, the sunset spilled orange into the road outside RE. A group of tourists paused on the sidewalk to enthusiastically snap pictures of the street under the lace of pink clouds across the sky.

“What’s it like to be back with him?” Touka asked after a moment. She looked down at the table and Hide noticed that she was digging the fingernails of one hand into the back of her other wrist. 

Hide paused. The first thing that came to mind was the last thing he remembered before he blacked out: hot surges of pain as teeth and kagune tore through his body; fear, bright and all-consuming; and, more than anything else, the shock and sorrow of knowing that Kaneki was the one killing him. Of course, Hide had known Kaneki was dangerous. He had already figured out Kaneki was the eyepatch ghoul and he had approached his friend in the sewers with that in mind. He knew, as well, that Kaneki had lost control of himself.

He also loved Kaneki and he knew that Kaneki loved him. Hide would never leave his friend alone when there was a chance he could help him. That didn’t dissuade the shock of feeling Kaneki’s teeth first tear into the flesh of his arm. Hide remembered that, when Kaneki first bit into his skin, he realized that he hadn’t really expected to get hurt.

“I’m scared,” Hide admitted. “You know, one of the last things I remember is Kaneki losing it. He almost killed me at the Anteiku Raid.”

Touka’s eyebrows went up. Hide continued: “I know he didn’t have control of himself. He went crazy or something after he went off with you guys.” Hide barely held back a tone of bitterness. He didn’t blame Touka for what happened to him or to Kaneki, but he couldn’t help but wish Kaneki had just stayed with him. Maybe Hide would have been able to stop him. 

“He left us after a while,” Touka said. She clenched her teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Hide said. He reached out a hand and carefully placed it over Touka’s wrist. She withdrew her other hand and Hide watched as three crescent-moon cuts healed on her skin. After a moment, Touka pulled away from Hide’s touch.

“He seems happy,” Touka commented. She looked away from Hide and instead surveyed the darkened shop. They were quiet, then. Hide rested his chin on his hand. 

“I don’t know if I should tell him,” Hide said. “You know, try to get him to remember me.”

Touka didn’t look at him when she spoke next. “Do you still…” she began. “Are you still his friend?” 

Kaneki’s face had loomed huge with his red eye and that black, beaklike mask before pain and blood loss pulled Hide under for the last time. Years before that, Hide passed notes in school to Kaneki. He fell asleep on his shoulder and dragged him through the city and loved him more than Hide had loved anybody. Hide noted, briefly, that maybe it wasn’t the best thing to overlook such a betrayal in favor of his love for Kaneki: Kaneki might not have been in control of himself, but he had still done it. 

But, really, Hide was only human. 

“I want to be,” he replied. 

……

Touka watched the clock on the microwave turn to 1:43. She kept her hands tight on a mug of coffee that had already gone cold and metallic. The window of her kitchen was another dark square in the side of an apartment building that unfurled toward the starless sky like a roll of film. Far below, gold light from the streetlamps and countless cars hazed over the sidewalk. The only light in the apartment was the dim glow from Touka’s bedroom down the hall; the kitchen was blue-dark, cool, and silent save for the white noise of Touka’s breathing. 

“Fuck,” Touka muttered. She shoved her coffee mug away and brought her hands to her face. She had already accepted that she would leave Kaneki alone; he seemed peaceful, she thought, and it was his own business if he wanted to dredge up his past. Kaneki had been one of her best friends, but Touka had built herself a new life: she had started a successful business, lived in her own apartment, and, more importantly, she was safe. She needed to prioritize herself. It was enough for her that he was alive and healthy. 

It wasn’t going to work like that now that Hide was somehow back. And a ghoul...and working for the CCG...with Kaneki. It was fucking stupid, first off, that they had all been thrown together again, and it was fucking stupid that Touka wanted it to be that way. Touka dropped her hands from her face and onto the laminate table again. She had cleaned the kitchen around eleven that night in a burst of anxious energy and she could see a dark reflection of her face twisting and warping on the spotless tabletop. Touka unlocked her phone and found the contact she had left open. 

Yoriko. She hadn’t seen her in a really long time; especially in the aftermath of the Anteiku Raid, it had been safer that way. Touka sighed and closed her contacts. She needed sleep.


	5. Salamander

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evil never attracted you as it did  
> me. I was told to leave quietly.  
> I met exile and then it liked me.  
> I could see cruelty in the underbelly but then  
> corners--no one goes totally in.
> 
> -[ Peggy Munson](http://www.peggymunson.com/), "What Sonar Means When You are Distant"

Haise was was waiting outside the front doors of the CCG when Hide returned from his apartment. He stashed his phone in his pocket as Hide jogged up, panting.

“Sorry,” Hide managed. He grinned.

“It’s fine. Sorry to drag you back to the office,” Haise replied. “Akira told me there’s a lead we need to follow, and it would be a good chance to get you out in the field. If you think you’re ready.”

Hide nodded. He was still grinning. “Absolutely! I am so ready. Totally ready.” 

Haise smiled back hesitantly. Hide was certainly a weird guy in all his enthusiasm and his habit of looking at Haise for a little bit longer than he needed to. Haise didn’t mind; Hide was cute, after all, but it felt like he knew something Haise didn’t. Based on the insight Hide had shown while reviewing case files in the last couple of days, Haise wouldn’t be surprised. Hide had identified similarities in the disappearances and then dredged through old files to find the same pattern three years previous--maybe with Hide around, the Quinx Squad could get something done in a reasonable period of time. 

The two of them took a cab away from the CCG, past the restaurants and shops frequented by businesspeople, and into a more industrial area of gray tenements, mechanic shops, and lots crowded with machinery and construction materials. The cab halted outside an apartment building and Haise climbed out, followed by Hide.

“Is there any chance we’re going to have to fight?” Hide asked, and Haise noticed a tone of nervousness.

“Probably not. The quinques are just in case,” Haise replied. “Hopefully we’ll just be looking through this apartment,” he gestured towards the building with the hand not holding his briefcase. 

“All right,” Hide said. “Second floor?” Haise nodded and led Hide in the front door and up two flights of stairs. He wondered how Hide would fight when they did have to: would he rely on his quinque like Haise or move more easily to kagune fighting like Shirazu and Urie? Akira had sworn that Hide had gone through plenty of training and testing before coming to work on the squad, but Haise knew well that the chaos of an actual fight was nothing like training in a facility. 

“Are you going to kick down the door?” Hide asked excitedly when he and Haise stopped outside one of the apartments.

“Not this time,” Haise replied with a laugh. “I save the door-kicking for when it’s an emergency or I really need to look cool. Also, that would be illegal.” 

“You already look super cool,” Hide assured him. Haise glanced at him with a surprised smile and then turned his attention back to the door. 

“This is the CCG,” he announced. No one replied, but he thought he heard shuffling inside. 

“Did you hear something?” Hide hissed. Haise nodded and gripped his briefcase tightly. He extended his hand to knock again, but the door jerked inward. Haise jumped back as a flash of black and blue darted past them into the hallway.

“Fuck, it’s a ghoul!” Hide exclaimed, but Haise was already running. A blue kagune flicked in the air at the back of a black-clad ghoul before they disappeared into the stairwell. Haise, with Hide behind him, sprinted down the stairs and through an alley beside the apartment building. They were both faster than the ghoul ahead of them, and they gained steadily as they careened around a corner and into another alleyway that reeked of trash. Haise had drawn his quinque. A rectangle of light ahead of them marked the end of the alleyway; Haise didn’t want to fight in the open street, so he pushed his pace and lunged a strike at the ghoul’s back. His quinque hit skin and the ghoul tripped and rolled.

Hide skidded to a stop behind Haise and Haise shot a glance in his direction before focusing on the ghoul again. Hide’s eyes were wide and he breathed haltingly. It could have been a trick of the light, but it looked like there was something wrong with his face: his skin seemed to be twitching. His right eye had gone red and black. 

A bikaku kagune stabbed through the air to the right of Haise’s head. Haise dodged it and jumped forward to swing his quinque towards the ghoul’s stomach. They wore a simple round mask with black and blue stripes and definitely didn’t seem experienced enough to fight Haise. The blade of his quinque slashed across their stomach and they screamed. The kagune coiled around to strike the back of Haise’s head, but he spun to block and then threw his weight into the ghoul’s body. They staggered backwards, putting Haise out of the range of their strikes, before Haise lunged back in and struck them at the side of the head with the blunt edge of his quinque. The ghoul collapsed with their legs trailing in a puddle of muddy water. 

Haise kept his eyes on the ghoul to make sure they didn’t jump up and escape. He would have to call in for a team better-equipped for an arrest. 

“Hide, could you call--” he began, but he was interrupted by a muffled scream. Haise looked behind him and saw Hide on his knees in the mud with his hands over his face. His briefcase lay forgotten beside him. Haise abandoned the ghoul and knelt down in front of Hide. 

“What’s going on?” Haise asked. As Haise watched, what seemed to be another layer of skin crept up over the backs of Hide’s hands. It twitched furiously like his face had and rolled over his fingers like cake batter oozing up to cover his hands. Haise reached forward and grasped Hide’s wrists to try to draw them away from his face, but the skin under Haise’s hands stood up in spikes and pain shot through his palms. Blood dripped down Hide’s hands and soaked into his sleeves when Haise yanked his hands back in surprise. Hide’s skin ridged up in spines like an ukaku kagune for a moment before it smoothed back out and finished covering his hands in a glove of flesh. 

“I don’t know,” Hide groaned. “I can’t control it.” He choked back another scream. His shirt tore open and a thick, orange-yellow bikaku kagune shot out from his lower back. It flailed in the air like a flame. 

“Hide, listen, we’re not fighting anymore,” Haise reminded him. He tried to keep his voice calm. “It’s okay. We’re safe. We’re not fighting.” 

“I know--I just can’t--” Hide spoke through gritted teeth. He drew his hands slowly away from his face and dug his fingers into the earth instead. Mud squelched up under his fingernails. The skin on his hands and arms undulated into cords of muscle or layers of fat or hard spikes. 

Haise recoiled when he saw Hide’s face. The liquid flesh tugged at his lips until the sides of his mouth gaped open to show new rows of teeth growing up under his tongue. Hide’s right cheek ripped open slowly and exposed the teeth and bloody gums below. Another eye, stunted and pupilless, grew directly from his torn skin to fill the hole. A hard slab of tissue that looked like a fingernail jutted from his forehead and drew blood where it dug back into the curve of his brow. 

Hide raised his hand from the mud and grasped at Haise’s knee. Haise took the hand in his and squeezed; this time, spikes did not jut from the skin. 

“Look, you didn’t stab me this time,” Haise said. He reached out and grasped Hide’s shoulder. The skin beneath Hide’s shirt pricked up enough to tear through the fabric, but the feeling was no more painful than if Haise pressed the tip of a needle to his palm. Haise squeezed Hide’s hand again and the needles retreated back into his shoulder. “That’s good. We’re not fighting, we’re safe. Keep doing what you’re doing,” Haise assured. 

When Hide lifted his gaze from the ground, he had begun to cry.  
“Kaneki...” he whispered before he squeezed his eyes shut. 

The liquid flesh began to pour down Hide’s body. From his face, it slipped down into the collar of his shirt; from his hands, it retreated into his sleeves. Blood oozed down Hide’s cheeks and forehead and welled from the corners of his mouth as teeth, eyes, and fingernails uprooted themselves and drained down beneath his clothes. Haise watched the cuts begin to heal and Hide’s face relaxed. His hand, slippery with sweat, went slack in Haise’s grip.

Hide screamed again and his hand tensed around Haise’s so forcefully that his fingernails tore into Haise’s palm. The back of Hide’s shirt shredded further as another kagune ripped through his skin: it was the same tone as his own skin, but stripes of it flashed paler or darker and then changed in a second. Unlike the bikaku that retained its natural shape, this kagune split into four flimsy tentacles, then a mess of spikes that contorted at the end into a koukaku-like blade and then spasmed into something like a bikaku. It broke up into spikes again and then the spikes shrunk into fingers; then it was a tangle of arms, too long and too short, growing from Hide’s back. Eyes and extra fingers, gnarled as they grew on twisted bones, sprouted up and down the arms. 

“Hide, come on, you just had it,” Haise kept his voice low and calm. He moved his hand from Hide’s shoulder to grasp the back of his head. “It’s all right.” Tears squeezed out of the corners of Hide’s eyes. Hide drew his head down almost to Haise’s chest as he crunched his body in on itself. He let out a sob.

The flesh-colored kagune shuddered and retreated into Hide’s back. His other kagune followed and the skin knitted itself up again to close them both inside. Hide relaxed again and drooped to the side. Haise caught his shoulders to keep him from tipping into the mud.

“I’m okay,” Hide breathed. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Haise replied. He checked behind him. At some point, the ghoul had awoken and escaped. Fuck. “Can you get up?” he asked.

Hide nodded and Haise helped him get to his feet. Haise shrugged off his jacket and offered it to Hide, who quickly wiped his muddy hands on the legs of his pants before taking it and pulling it on.

“Thanks,” he mumbled. The gash on his cheek was still healing and blood had crusted in a streak down to his lip. His torn shirt hung off his shoulders and his pants were streaked with mud from the knees down. “Sasaki, honestly, I’m really sorry,” he repeated.

“Don’t worry,” Haise replied as he gathered the quinque briefcases in his hands. They had lost the ghoul, but he couldn’t bring himself to scold Hide for it. “I know what it’s like,” he added quietly.


	6. The Thing's Name and Yours

Haise had brought Hide home to the quinx apartment to shower and afterwards gave him a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt to wear. Hide had played Grand Theft Auto with Saiko, Mutsuki, and Shirazu clustered on and around the couch; Urie watched him with suspicion while leafing through a stack of paperwork. When the quinxes wandered into their rooms for the night, Hide and Haise were left alone in the living room. The lights were on over the kitchen, but Hide sprawled out on his side under a blanket and closed his eyes. The couch was comfortable enough and he was exhausted, but he couldn’t stop playing the incident in the alleyway over in his head. He absentmindedly pulled the sweatshirt up to his nose again; it smelled like coffee and ink and laundry detergent. 

The living room was silent save for the quiet click of Haise’s laptop keys at the kitchen table. He was probably typing up a report of what happened that day.

Hide sat up and looked over the back of the couch.

“Um, Haise?” Hide asked. The typing stopped and Haise looked up. He wore his cute circular glasses. “What are you going to say happened in the alley?” 

Haise glanced to his right towards the doors of the quinxes’ rooms, then stood up from the table and crossed the room to sit in an armchair across from Hide. Hide watched as he tucked his feet up underneath him. Kaneki had done that, too, when he felt like he could relax in an environment.

“I’ll say that a ghoul came out of the apartment and I managed to hit them, but they disappeared,” Haise replied easily. 

Hide relaxed. “Thank you,” he said again. “I guess I just don’t want them to know I’m not as successful as they thought I was. You know, like, living as a ghoul in the CCG, what if they decide this isn’t working?” 

Hide thought of the warm, fleshy, false-skin kagune crawling over his body and tearing open his face. Failed experiment, they would say. Failed experiments get disposed of. 

Haise nodded. “You have two kagune,” he commented. 

“Yeah. They made me a kakuja. Fucking crazy.” Hide shrugged. He remembered the way Kaneki had looked in the sewers with his gnarled black mask and more rinkaku tentacles than Hide could keep track of. He didn’t like pretending not to know that Haise was most likely a kakuja, too; he had never lied to Kaneki and he didn’t want to start. He thought, however, that it would be better to wait and learn more about Haise before telling him anything: if Haise was happy, Hide didn’t want to ruin his peace out of selfishness.

Haise looked down at his hands. “Me too,” he admitted. “That’s what I meant when I said I knew what it was like to lose control.” 

“Honestly, I’m just waiting for Shiba to come pick me up, decide the experiment failed, and kill me,” Hide blurted. 

“Yeah,” Haise replied with a smile. “You’ll get all these investigators glaring at you like they want to drag you to Cochlea.”

“Right?” Hide exclaimed. He made a broad gesture with his hands like he did when he got excited. “On my first day there were these big guys holding their briefcases tight like they were going to come after me!” 

Haise laughed and rubbed the lenses of his glasses with the hem of his tee shirt. When he pulled up the fabric, Hide could see a strip of pale stomach above the waistband of his sweatpants. Hide got caught up watching his face as it fell into a puzzled frown.

“What was that name you said in the alley? You said the same thing when we were at RE together,” Haise asked. 

Hide wanted to tell Haise everything. He wanted Haise to remember who Hide was and how close they had been. But he knew that was selfish; what if Haise remembered what it had been like to be Kaneki and lose control? Fuck. Hide didn’t want to make these choices for his friend. Though he would protect Kaneki, Haise, or whoever his best friend might be, he didn’t want to be in the position of lying to him. 

“Just a friend,” Hide responded as casually as possible. Haise put his glasses back on and nodded. 

“I want you to be able to stay here,” Haise said. “I think you fit well in the team. Everyone else thinks you will too.”

Hide could feel himself blushing. “Maybe not Urie,” he replied.

“Urie doesn’t want anybody on this team except himself,” Haise smiled. “What I wanted to say, though, is that I’ll help you control your abilities.” 

“Oh. Yeah, definitely!,” Hide exclaimed. “That sounds great. I don’t really want to get my ass kicked by Arima.”

“Yeah, neither do I,” Haise replied with a grin. Hide just liked seeing him smile. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wanted to post the first six chapters in one go, but from now on updates will come on Mondays and Thursdays starting May 4! It'll probably be about two chapters at a time until I'm done.


	7. Patterns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There doesn't seem like much of a reason to hold out posting the updates since I have most of them done, so I'm just going to post the next few chapters and then post as I finish it up. Enjoy <3

A light rain misted over the streets that evening. Touka yawned as she locked the door of RE behind her and opened her umbrella. She was grateful that Hide and Kaneki hadn’t come in that day; the meager hours of sleep she had been getting each night since Hide’s reappearance weren’t enough to fuel her through that emotional shitshow. 

Her keys jingled when she dropped them back in the pocket of her coat. She double-checked the doors just to be sure they were locked before heading towards the nearest crosswalk. The drugstore across the street and just a few doors to the left of RE had a payphone, if she remembered correctly. Touka jogged across the street, past a crowd of teenagers laughing raucously, and ducked into the cramped store. The greasy, salty smell of meat intermingled with citrus cleaning fluid made Touka wrinkle her nose as she hurried to the back of the store where two grimy payphones hunched against the wall. 

That morning she decided she didn’t want to wait anymore--she wanted to stop worrying. Yoriko’s contact was still open on her phone. Touka had glanced at it periodically during her shifts that day. Each time she fell into a daydream of reconstructing her memories--mostly Yoriko’s smile when she gave Touka a complicated new dish, got a good grade on a test, or finished watching a movie she really liked. Surprisingly enough, she liked action movies and dramatic period pieces--the more opulent the costumes, the better. One time, for her birthday, Touka had taken her out to a new movie and surprised her with dinner at a fancy restaurant afterwards. Touka had eaten the minimum as usual, but Yoriko said it was the best birthday she ever had. So Touka decided that she didn’t need to see Yoriko again; she just needed to make sure she was still alive and okay. She would just call Yoriko, and Yoriko would pick up, and then she’d be done with it. 

Touka dropped her coins into the slot in the phone and dialed the number she had memorized over the course of the last few days. She held the phone close enough that she could hear the ringing but not so close that the sticky plastic actually touched her cheek. The phone kept ringing. Touka scuffed the soles of her shoes on the floor. It was still ringing. Of course, Yoriko wouldn’t recognize the number and wouldn’t pick up, or she had changed numbers in those two years since Touka had called. 

The ringing cut out.  
“Kosaka Yoriko’s phone,” a woman’s voice that was definitely not Yoriko’s said.

“Hello?” Touka asked.

“This is her mother speaking. Are you a friend of Yoriko’s?”

“Yes,” Touka replied hesitantly. She reasoned that just because Yoriko’s mom answered didn’t mean that Yoriko was okay. She wanted to hear Yoriko’s voice, or at least have Mrs. Kosaka ask if she wanted to call back to talk to Yoriko later.

“Do you have any information about her disappearance?” Mrs. Kosaka asked. 

Touka slammed the phone down on the hook and quickly opened the browser on her own phone. The top result for “Kosaka Yoriko missing” was a news article announcing that a second-year university student (154 cm, brown hair, last seen wearing a pink skirt and white sweater) had disappeared from the Kosaka home in the 20th Ward two weeks previous. Due to a recent rash of abductions in that ward and others, ghoul involvement was suspected. 

…..

Hide handed Touka a stack of papers over the counter. The evening rush of people leaving work had mostly cleared out save for a couple by the window and a woman headed towards the door with a latte to go. It had been two days since Touka had frantically texted Hide at the number he gave her when they had talked at RE. Hide was the only person Touka could think of that might have information about Yoriko, as well as the only person who would understand her desperation to find her friend.

“Sorry, this is all I could get on her,” Hide apologized while Touka flipped through the packet. “Most of it’s about the disappearances in general. We’re actually the team on it, since they think it might be the Aogiri Tree. These are our findings from the last few days.” 

“Fuck,” Touka grumbled. On the last page of the information Hide had given her--mostly excerpts from reports plus a small map charting where the four disappearances had occurred--was a full explanation of the possible Aogiri involvement. “Are you close to finding her? It doesn’t look like it.” 

“I don’t know,” Hide admitted. “Probably not. If I’ve learned something being in with the CCG it’s that they don’t do as much as they want everyone to think they do.” 

“She’s been missing for over two weeks. She’s probably dead by now,” Touka dropped the papers on the counter.

“Maybe not,” Hide replied. Touka glared at him. “We haven’t found any of these bodies yet, and it’s been months since the first person was abducted. If the ghouls were just killing for food, they wouldn’t have snatched up people without at least leaving blood everywhere, either from injuries or eating them on the spot. Aogiri definitely took these people with the intention of keeping them unharmed and alive.” Hide’s eyes went wide and he talked with his hands when he explained. 

“Why would they do that?” Touka asked. The bell on the door rang as the last two customers left.

“Well this is kind of a stretch, but the other people at the office seemed to think there might be a connection, too,” Hide began. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another piece of paper, then smoothed it out on the counter. “The last time we got a pattern like this was about three years ago. A few months later the CCG found like six bodies dumped at the same time. And it looked like…” Hide paused and looked at Touka.

“What?” she asked.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” Hide warned.

“I eat people,” Touka reminded him. 

“Right. Me too,” Hide replied awkwardly. “Anyway, it looked like some of the older bodies had been kept frozen for months. They’d all been preserved for at least a little while, and they’d been autopsied professionally. And they’d been experimented on before death.”

“Experimented on in what way?”

“They were humans with kakuhou grafted into their bodies,” Hide explained. 

“Like you.”

“Basically, yeah. But I guess the experiments didn’t work on them.” Hide ran his hand through his hair and frowned. 

Touka remained silent and scanned the last paper that Hide had produced. A man’s body had been found with his organs shredded, his spine snapped, and a half-formed kagune growing inward rather than out. Another man apparently died from asphyxiation on his own blood when the kakuhou implanted in his body had ruptured. A woman appeared unharmed until the CCG coroners cut open her skull and found pieces of her own kagune slicing through her brain. One had bled out when the cuts on her back from releasing her kagune simply hadn’t healed. 

“If you’re going to look for Yoriko at least let me come with you,” Hide said. Touka looked up from the paper in surprise.

“No,” she replied. Fucking hell, he was quick. The second she read the article about Yoriko’s disappearance she had sprinted home and found her mask at the back of her sock drawer; of course Hide would understand something like that. 

“You can’t do it by yourself!” Hide exclaimed. 

Touka sighed. She would at least have to appease him. “Fine. I need to investigate on my own first. It’s pretty obvious in these reports that the CCG doesn’t know shit about the Aogiri Tree. I’ll let you know.” 

“Thank you,” Hide said earnestly. Touka gathered up the papers and tucked them into the pocket of her apron before coming out from behind the counter and crossing the shop to turn the sign to “closed.”

“How’s the whole ghoul thing going for you,” she asked as she started wiping down the recently-vacated tables. 

Hide laughed. “I’ve been doing this for like three months now, so...I guess I’ve gotten used to it. I know the CCG isn’t like, killing people to feed me. I don’t really mind. I miss food though.”

“Kaneki said the same thing,” Touka replied with a smile. “Humans are so obsessed with food.”

The upbeat ringtone of Hide’s phone cut the peaceful quiet of the coffee shop. 

“Oh, it’s him again,” Hide explained with a grin. He answered and hurried towards the door. “Sorry, I have to go. Please call me,” he whispered to Touka.

Touka waved good-bye as he slipped outside and disappeared around the corner, chatting animatedly with Kaneki as he walked. Once Hide was gone, Touka put down the rag she was using to clean the tables and pulled out the papers again. If there were organized disappearances, there were Aogiri poachers in the streets stalking people to find the right targets. That’s how it worked. Touka cursed under her breath--she hadn’t fought anyone in months. That was the point of her new life. She wasn’t going to hesitate, though, when it came to her best friend.


	8. Intermission I (Surgeon's Notes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrestle through the illness, through the body of  
> Proteus through he be made of burning fire  
> Though Failure be beast or wild bird  
> Though he score your face with claws, though  
> He pinions you under the heavy weight of a shoulder's flesh  
> Burrow in the dank dark fur and whelp  
> In the common speech of the body, no passage  
> In the sound of the voice keeping silence, praise,  
> At the extremity of the translucent ion, the body holds  
>  _for I had placed myself behind my own back refusing to see myself_
> 
> -[ Sasha West](http://bodyliterature.com/sasha-west/), "An Emaciated Horse Led by His Master"

SUBJECT: Nagachika Hideyoshi  
HEAD SURGEON: Dr. Shiba  
PROCEDURE: Metamorphosis Project (dual kakuhou implantation)  


PROGRESS REPORT  


Subject killed in Anteiku Raid, likely by Eyepatch Ghoul. Body preserved for future insight into wounding capability of Eyepatch’s multiple kagune. CCG administration expressed a need for undercover agents after the Auction Raid. Upon reviewing the stored cadavers for experimental resuscitation, Nagachika’s body was found to be intact enough for the procedure. It should be noted that this procedure is also the first attempt to resuscitate a human deceased longer than three months. The Metamorphosis Project will employ the regenerative capabilities of multiple kagune on a human system to repair the damage to the system. 

DAY 1: Subject remains under sedation; appears comatose while the brain repairs itself. No sign of metamorphosis capability. RCC levels normal; URC levels low. Healing ability has reached the level of an ordinary ghoul. 

DAY 3: Brain waves returning to normal but subject remains sedated. Metamorphosis activity appears to have initiated on its own. Nurses observed the flesh-colored kagune moving over his skin to cover his cheeks and forehead. RCC levels normal; URC levels spiking.

DAY 5: After being weaned off sedation, subject woke and began convulsing and shouting the same name repeatedly. He responded to meat enthusiastically and ate without reserve. Tranquilizers administered. Upon examination several hours after feeding, body appears to have healed fully with new healing capabilities. Note that RC cells could be used in the future for therapeutic purposes. RCC levels normal; URC levels normal. 

DAY 6: Subject woke agitated but calmer than Day 5 and involuntarily released both kagune. Modified kagune, uncontrolled, caused random body parts to grow over his body. Was not able to break the restraints. After being administered RCC suppressants, he was able to eat. Appeared confused and distressed. With his brain healed we carried out the memory procedure. 

DAY 10: Memory procedure appears successful and subject was transferred from full hospitalization into a secure facility for testing and training. Accidental use of natural kagune has not occurred since Day 6 but subject’s appearance has changed involuntarily several times. 

DAY 15: TESTING RESULTS. Metamorphosis abilities extend to adding extra flesh and small physical features as kagune coats the body similar to the Arata armor. Eyes, noses, ears, teeth, fingernails, fingers, toes, tongues, and lips have been observed. Small arms and hands have manifested but this is not the intended purpose. 

DAY 21: TESTING RESULTS. Subject has succeeded in maintaining the modified kagune in a shell over his body and changing skin-tone. Dual kagune usage has not been attempted. 

DAY 30: TESTING RESULTS. Remarkable success up to this point. Subject demonstrates full control in creating false facial features, hair, and changing skin tone. Brain activity appears healthy. Kakuja response has not yet manifested, perhaps due to steady diet and minimal stress.

DAY 45: TRAINING RESULTS. No control issues observed even as subject enters simulated fighting situations. Subject has developed ability to create false height by distributing kagune tissue onto his feet and head; also has succeeded in adding mass to his body. 

DAY 51: TRAINING RESULTS. Simultaneous kagune usage successful. Subject demonstrated ability to maintain false shape while performing basic fight combinations with his kagune (bikaku type, yellow and orange). 

DAY 60: TRAINING RESULTS. Subject has progressed to partner fighting while using both kagune simultaneously. Shows remarkable control over his abilities with minimal failure of control over URC kagune. Failures of control present as ripples, twitches, or blemishes in the false skin.

DAY 65: TESTING RESULTS. In testing the full range of capability of the URC kagune, subject is able to form the tissue to mimic the other kagune types. Ability to generate arms and hands has also been observed, though they appear disproportionate and weak. 

DAY 93: Subject released from the training facility following a maintenance of normal URC and RCC levels for three weeks as well as succeeding in thorough physical testing. No concerns about putting the subject into the field. Experiment has been a resounding success. 

……

SUBJECT: Kosaka Yoriko (Patient 4)  
HEAD SURGEON: Dr. Kanou  
PROCEDURE: Shapeshifter 

  


FINAL REPORT

Patient 4’s response has been far too unstable. Though she has healed fully from the surgery, she has become a risk rather than a learning opportunity. When taken out from under sedation three days after the surgery, she released both the URC kagune and a rinkaku in a panic. She was given RCC suppressants and later was able to control one kagune individually to a minimal extent. She used the opportunity to attempt an escape, but did not manage to break the restraints.  


In testing, the URC kagune covered Patient 4’s body without her control. When it was on her body, she could create eyes, mouths, teeth, fingers, and other small physical features to grow across its surface. However, these features did not grow in normal patterns and did not serve as camouflage. After some tests, she was able to move it behind her and manipulate it into approximations of other kagune types. 

When taken off RCC suppressants, Patient 4 was unable to control her kagune and responded with panic but a of aggression than is ordinarily found in a kakuja. Understanding the mania of kakuja as a stress response, she was unable to control her stress levels and stave off the reaction. During these times she attempted to escape. All physical elements of the procedure appear successful, but the psychological load of the procedure might be too great. Future experiments should take into account that the sudden implantation of kakuja levels of RC cells may be too much for a human to withstain. The potential of the procedure is huge. Adding a URC kagune to a ghoul would be the next step. 

Patient 4 will be terminated within three days if there is no change in her psychological state.


	9. Intermission II (Subject's Notes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight weeping, I was told to hold still, hold on  
> While he shifts from mammoth to ostrich, razorback to jackdaw,  
> Is the face is the body still there while  
> He bites your calves with the fangs of a snake while  
> One after the other then side by side he tends  
> The seals that nudge your ankles, those seals  
> That push and hold your flesh down in tide,  
> Herds of muscle, sleek for the ocean, body tumbled between the fur and fur  
> And so as my body gave up, I became  
> What I was; I ceased to be what I was not.  
> When you settle on your own face, let's both be done with you.
> 
> -[Sasha West](http://bodyliterature.com/sasha-west/), "An Emaciated Horse Led by His Master"

_Failed experiments get disposed of._

After the tenth day, Hide realized that his survival hinged on whether or not he could learn to use the ability they had forced into his body. Ghoul healing powers were one hell of a convenience: they had slashed him open and put a couple new organs in him and he didn’t even feel it. The pain came when that horrid thing washed up over his body and tore his skin open trying to grow. He could keep back the other kagune, but the second one seemed much more eager to consume him. They kept him fed so hunger wasn’t an issue, but whenever he felt even the slightest fear the kagune covered his body like a parasite.

He hardly slept in the hospital. It was never silent: machines beeped all night; the air conditioning rushed and clattered; nurses appeared every two hours to take vitals. One night, with his eyes closed, Hide heard doctors speaking in the hall. Not full sentences, just words; snippets, but enough: possibly unsuccessful. Experiment termination. Subject disposal. 

After that came the boredom of months spent indoors and the panicked desperation to succeed. Success was survival. Hide made sure that the only times his power spasmed out of control was when he was under the blankets of his bed or locked in the bathroom. He was a model subject; he had to be. Success was survival. Success was survival. 

He learned faces and mimicked them. He contorted his body into monstrous shapes. He let the kagune tear his skin open so Shiba could watch the wounds heal. He learned how to keep up a facade; he forgot his own face. He lived. Success was survival. 


	10. Reunion

The briefcase hung cool and heavy in Touka’s hand. She slid the latch on the handle and a flat, broad blade about as long as a baseball bat unfolded from the case. The blue surface glinted in the yellow glow of a nearby streetlight.

“This is fucked,” she said as she tested the weight of the quinque in her hand. She and Hide had ducked into the shadows behind a darkened bookstore a couple of blocks from the building to which she had tracked a group of Aogiri poachers. She had to go pretty fucking far: whatever new headquarters they had set up was a smart distance from their hunting grounds. The poachers had disappeared into a hulking gray warehouse with Touka in tow. That was when she gave up and called Hide.

“If they see your kagune, they’ll know it’s you,” Hide reminded her. He nervously looked around at the street. Touka flicked the latch on the quinque handle again and it reformed into the shape of a briefcase. She felt no comfort from the weight of a weapon in her hand. 

“I know,” she snapped. “Let’s go over the plan again.” 

“Right. So I do my shapeshifting thing to look like that guy you took a photo of, and I get into that building and go down into what we think is like their basement lair or whatever,” Hide paused and Touka nodded her understanding. “You hang back behind me in case someone thinks I’m suspicious and you need to kick ass. Try not to let anyone notice the briefcase, I guess. Hopefully they just think we killed some Doves or something. Then we go and grab Yoriko and try to find a shorter way out.” 

Touka put a hand to her forehead. “If it gets bad, just get out. I don’t want you dying for this,” she grumbled. 

“I’d die for this,” Hide replied brightly. “She’s your friend.” 

“I appreciate it, but don’t,” Touka said. She slid her mask down over her face. It was a plain black mask rather than her signature rabbit face. She didn’t need to make a name for herself anymore. 

Hide sighed but dropped the matter. “Alright, I’m going to do my thing now. Can I see the photo again?” he asked. Touka thought he looked nervous; he wiped his hands on the legs of his pants and glanced around them quickly.

Touka handed Hide her phone and he studied the photo on the screen. She had snapped a picture of one of the poachers; mimicking anyone higher-up would be too risky. Hide handed the phone back, hung his arms by his sides, and took a deep breath.

Another layer of what looked like skin but moved like oozing molasses crawled up from the collar of his jacket and began coating his neck and face. It spilled into the dips and rushed up over his cheeks and even coated his eyeballs and hair. For a moment before the skin started contorting itself into new shapes, Hide looked like a horrid department store mannequin: his eyes and hair had been smoothed over by membranes of skin. 

He began to change. The skin began to delicately flair out to create differently-shaped features. Thick black hair grew all the way to his shoulders. His skin tone paled and his irises turned turned dark. Through his clothes, Touka could see his musculature changing slightly: his thighs widened and so did his waist. Though Touka didn’t notice while it was happening, he looked a few centimeters taller by the time he had completed the transformation.

“What the fuck...” Touka muttered. 

“I know, gross, right?” Hide said with a smile. “The real problem is that I can’t make myself smaller since the kagune can only add tissue.”

“It’s still...impressive,” Touka replied. “And disgusting.” She looked over her shoulder into the street to make sure no one was walking by. “We should get moving,” she added, trying to conceal her nervousness.

Hide nodded. “Thanks for calling me,” he said. 

“Thanks for coming,” Touka replied. 

They set out across the parking lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna be 100% honest and just say that I did not feel like writing a bunch of fight scenes and figuring out how all of this should work, so I just didn't do it. Writing fics, for me, is just about having fun and writing what I want to write, and most of what I want to write is character interaction or gratuitous gross stuff (obviously). I included all the plot-important information in this and the following chapters; there won't be missing plot points in cutting the lab fight scene. I hope you all enjoy it despite the abridging!


	11. Draw a Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draw a monster.
> 
> Why is it a monster?
> 
> -Janice Lee, _Daughter_

Yoriko slumped against Touka in the elevator to the apartment. Her eyes hung half-closed and her breathing was slow and ragged. Touka had draped her coat over her friend’s shoulders, since Yoriko wore only a white hospital gown coming untied at the back. Her light-brown hair was greasy and blood had worked its way up under her nails and dried brown. 

Another tenant in the hallway watched them with wide eyes as Touka half-carried Yoriko out of the elevator and to the door of the apartment. Touka fumbled with the keys but got the door open and helped Yoriko inside. The apartment was small; one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen attached to the living room. There was a couch upholstered in blue fabric coming threadbare on the armrests and coffee cups stacked up in the sink. The sun had begun to rise in an ashy haze of gray and white. 

Touka closed the door behind them and guided Yoriko into the bedroom, then carefully settled her on the mattress--which was directly on the floor, since with her budget Touka saw no need for bed frames. Yoriko groaned and rolled onto her side. Her hands clenched into fists around the sheets. 

Touka reached down and gently tried to pull the jacket off Yoriko’s shoulders. 

White and red flashed in front of Touka’s vision and then she was staggering back into the wall. She instinctively released her kagune in a spray of lurid purple and red spikes that fanned from her back like a wing, but she immediately withdrew them when she saw Yoriko crouching on the bed. A long, heavy blade extended from a thick epaulette-shaped armoring of tissue guarding her right shoulder and upper bicep. More startling than the brilliant red koukaku kagune was the mass of flesh-colored tentacles that writhed behind Yoriko’s back--they alternated between fluid and stiff as if Yoriko was trying to grow bones inside of them and then breaking them to dust again. Yoriko was a kakuja: If Yoriko attacked Touka, it wouldn’t even be a contest. Touka would be bleeding out onto the cheap brown tile with her organs fanning out around her in a lace of wet pink tissue before Yoriko even felt the sting of her bristling kagune. 

Holy fuck, Touka thought. But Yoriko wasn’t moving to attack; the blade of her koukaku, Touka realized, was blunt-edged and thick like a shield. Touka raised her hands in surrender and looked Yoriko in the eye: one hazel-green, one black veined with red. White spit dried at the corners of Yoriko’s mouth. 

“Yoriko, it’s Touka,” Touka assured calmly. She remained with her back against the wall. “It’s just me, remember?” 

Yoriko’s shoulders slumped and the arm supporting her koukaku lowered so the flat of the blade rested on the sheets. She looked at for a moment before closing her eyes and letting her chin fall to her chest. Yoriko began to sob. 

“I’m t-t-t-tired,” she stuttered through the sobs shaking her chest. Both of her kagune retreated into her back and the skin stitched up to conceal them neatly. She let her body fall against the bed and curled her legs up to her chest. Touka rushed to the side of the mattress and reached for Yoriko’s hands. Blood seeped through the wrinkles in her palm and down onto the gray sheets as she dug her fingernails into her skin in crescent-moon gashes. When Touka’s fingers brushed her own, Yoriko recoiled with a howl. The flesh of her back split open and her skinlike kagune began seeping over her shoulders and up to her face. It formed into a face: sharp cheeks, an angular nose and brows, and deep wrinkles fanning from the corners of Yoriko’s closed eyes. Touka remembered seeing the face of Dr. Kanou in his laboratory.

“Yoriko, don’t worry, I won’t touch you,” Touka said. “It’s all right, you’re out now.” Fuck. Fuck, she was out of her depth. The face writhed in waves of liquid skin and sprouted a ring of sharp fingernails in a halo around Yoriko’s face. The claws carved bloody furrows in Yoriko’s skin as the kagune retreated down her neck and shoulders to tuck into her back again. 

Yoriko turned her face towards the sheets and Touka could hear her panting. 

“I’m really tired--control it,” she mumbled. 

“We can fix that,” Touka promised. She produced her phone from her pocket and called Hide from her contacts. He picked up on the second ring. How fucking attentive. 

“Do you have RCC suppressants?” Touka demanded.

“Shit, yeah, I didn’t even think of that. Yoriko must be freaking out.”

“Yeah, get over here.” 

“Okay, I’m heading out now.” Touka heard the clink of keys and muffled voices in the background, then the shuffling of a chair being pushed out.

“Is she okay? I was barely keeping it together at two weeks, and they were actually taking care of me right,” Hide asked through labored breath. 

“No, she’s not. That second kagune came up over her face and tore her up.” 

“Right, it’ll hurt but I promise it’s not as bad as it looks. If she can’t keep her regular kagune in, that’s the problem. The other one can hurt her a little but it can’t do any real damage,” Hide explained. The scratchy rug under the mattress dug into Touka’s knees. The hesitant gray sun through the window cast a bright square around Yoriko. Her breathing had slowed into a rhythm of sleep or at least exhausted placidity and her unwashed hair hung down over her eyes. Touka would have tucked it behind her ear. 

“Just hurry,” Touka murmured. Her eyes fogged over with exhaustion and she rested her cheek on the bed. 

“I’m going into the train station but I’ll call you when I’m at the door,” Hide said. Touka hung up the phone and closed her eyes.

  


…….

  


Yoriko dreamed of citrus.

When she was a kid, she liked to watch her mother’s small, dry hands peel a grapefruit in a spiral: shucking the yellow rind, intact but unfurling. The sun unraveled to coil in the kitchen sink. 

_If I take something apart, it is not the same as when it was whole._

At home, Yoriko’s mom kept a silver grapefruit spoon in the drawer beside the oven. It had smooth curved sides and a serrated top edge. The delicate tines caught on the insides of Yoriko’s lips and shredded the tender skin. Once she had cleaned the blood from her mouth she deconstructed the pink tissue: peeled apart the delicate sacs of nectar and snapped the white tendons securing meat to rind. Vessels burst and filled the natural bowl of the fruit with sour pink juice. When Yoriko brought the fruit to her lips to drain the fluid, it poured cold and stinging down her throat. 

_If I take something apart, it doesn’t matter if I put all the pieces back together right. It is not the same as when it was whole._

  


…….

  


Touka jerked awake to the sound of her phone ringing. She pawed through the pillows and shoved the phone to her face haphazardly.

“What?” she demanded automatically.

“Sorry, it’s Hide. I knocked but you didn’t answer,” Hide said brightly. This fucking guy, honestly, was like summer all the time. Touka thought of herself more like those frosts that rolled in a month late to piss everyone off and cause power outages. 

“I’ll be there,” Touka replied. She dropped the phone into the sheets. Yoriko was still curled in a ball, but she had squirmed up to the top of the mattress so at least her head rested on a pillow. Touka pushed her hair out of her eyes and stumbled to the front door. She opened it to find Hide dressed for work with his backpack and a to-go cup from the cafe down the street. He still held the phone by his ear.

“This is for you,” he said, transferring the warm cup into Touka’s hand.

“Are you...still on the phone with me?” Touka asked. 

“Yeah, I never hang up on anyone.” Hide grinned. Touka reached out, took the phone, and pressed the red button on the screen.

“Thanks for the coffee. Come on in.” She handed the phone back to Hide and stood aside to welcome him in. “Yoriko’s asleep right now, so I think she’s safer.”

“I mean, I don’t know all that much about this,” Hide replied, “but as long as her kagune aren’t coming out involuntarily when she’s asleep then I don’t think it’s critical.” He dropped his backpack on the couch and dug around in it until Touka heard the clatter of pills on plastic. Hide produced a clear bottle with a labelled with his name and the dosage information. 

“Shit, I’m not taking all of your pills,” Touka said. She sipped the warm coffee--dark roast, good quality, but she could have made it better. She was still grateful that Hide had brought it, because she was probably too exhausted to so much as heat the water. 

“That’s fine, just take what you need,” Hide tossed her the bottle. It rattled when she caught it one-handed. 

“I can’t touch her,” Touka explained. “When I tried, she almost attacked me.” 

“Huh. Okay. Well I know the other day I when was freaking out, I touched Haise and it helped,” Hide mused. Touka raised her eyebrows. “You know what I mean!” he exclaimed, but his whole face turned pink with a blush. 

“She probably felt threatened,” Touka remarked. “I won’t wake her up. Hopefully she’ll hear me out when she does.” She dropped down onto the couch and took a long drink of her coffee. Hide sat down beside her and rubbed his eyes.

“Yeah, that makes sense. You can’t be angry or scared when you’re trying to control it or it just takes over you. You have to be calm,” he explained. Touka didn’t say anything; she was almost falling asleep where she sat. Despite the shadows under his eyes, Hide looked absurdly energetic. 

“You going into work today?” Hide asked. She shook her head no. He continued: “I have to go soon but do you want me to stay for a while? I could help when Yoriko wakes up.”

“Thanks,” Touka replied. She took a few more long drinks from her coffee, closed her eyes, and let her body sag into the couch. The muscles of her shoulders had tensed into painful knots and the calluses on her heels hurt when she walked. Nothing would be better than to be back in bed with Yoriko.

“Oh, um, I have a question,” Hide began. “This is going to sound stupid, because I know you don’t really talk about feelings,” he blurted. Touka snorted a laugh.

“Keep talking,” she said with a grin. She absentmindedly used the hair elastic on her wrist to secure her bangs back in a ponytail halfway up the top of her head.

“Wow, that’s a good style for you,” Hide chided.

“Fuck you, you’re the one who’s got that porcupine shit going on,” Touka countered.

“Okay, listen, they shaved my head when they were mixing around my organs. This was not my fashion decision.” He ran a hand through his half-grown-out brown hair. “I like the color better than the bleached-out thing,” he remarked.

“Me too, but anyway,” Touka prompted. 

“Right. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about Haise,” he began. Touka looked down at her lap and picked at the fabric of her leggings. “He did some really bad stuff. To me and to other people. To you. But I miss him so much that I don’t really care. Like when I look at him, I know bad things happened to me but I don’t think of him doing them. I guess...I don’t know whether I blame him.” Hide said it all in one rush and Touka felt his words in her stomach: what she had been wondering for a long time.

“I blame Kaneki,” she began. “I don’t know how much of him is still around. I guess you’d know that. But I think you don’t have to forgive him if you still want to--” she paused-- “be with him or whatever. It’s not like him doing that shit and liking him can’t happen at the same time. But the fucking thing about Kaneki is that he’s stubborn and he keeps fucking doing what he does for a long time if he thinks it’s a good idea. Or at least he did, I don’t know. So we can be careful and at the same time we can still be his friends.” At the end she spoke faster than Hide had. In the moment she didn’t think about the words she was saying but later she’d remember that she’d been thinking those same words for months. 

Hide blinked at her. He’d probably never heard her say that many words at once. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right. Do you want me to, like, bring him into RE to talk to you?” Hide offered.

“No, it’s not like he remembers--” a voice faintly calling Touka’s name interrupted her. She bolted to the bedroom with the pill bottle still in her hands. 

Yoriko sat up in bed and watched Touka approach through half-closed eyes. Her hair had tangled up on top of her head and the hospital gown hung all the way off one shoulder. 

“Hey,” Touka said, kneeling down on the rug so her head was about level with Yoriko’s chest. She set the pill bottle and the coffee down on the floor beside the mattress. Yoriko slowly shifted to the edge of the mattress and knelt there. Her thighs curved up under the gown. She reached out and pulled Touka towards her. Touka moved onto the bed and relaxed against Yoriko’s body. 

Yoriko’s arms were warm where they encircled Touka’s shoulders. Under the smells of hospitalization and blood, Touka could find Yoriko underneath: traces of flowery shampoo; something sugary and bright. 

“Thanks,” Yoriko whispered. She pressed her face into Touka’s neck. “I don’t know what’s going on.” 

“I’m sorry,” Touka mumbled. What the hell else could she say? Where could she possibly start explaining everything? “This shouldn’t have happened,” she said. 

“I didn’t know you were a ghoul. I guess that’s stupid because I’m a ghoul now, too.” Touka could feel Yoriko’s eyelashes fluttering on her neck. Warm breath ghosted over her skin as Yoriko talked. “It would have been okay to tell me,” Yoriko added. 

“I’m...I’m sorry,” Touka said again. “I’m really fucking sorry that this happened and I’m sorry I just left you like that.” It was fucking cruel to have walked away from Yoriko like she had, she knew it. But it seemed like that was what needed to happen to keep her safe; she was a human, she was innocent, and she didn’t need Touka’s bullshit. And Touka couldn’t be accountable for her safety; she hadn’t been prepared for that. 

The worst part was that it hadn’t counted for much in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aight stay tuned for smut in the next 2 chapters. I turned out 12 chapters of this thing in like three days so probably expect the next update by this weekend <3


	12. Begin Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was actually supposed to be chapter 13, but I finished it before the actual chapter 12, and it's good so I thought I'd post it first. The actual plot has shifted almost entirely to Touka and Yoriko at this point anyway--so the plot resumes with them as of next chapter.
> 
> Chapter title is from [ this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr5mtKSbd7M) by Purity Ring!

The first time it happened, they were in the office alone. It had been about two weeks since Hide joined the squad, and that morning he walked in looking absolutely exhausted. He came into the office that morning wearing a brand new pair of new headphones. Haise watched him take the headphones his head and hang them around his neck. The cord snaked into his front pocket. 

Haise felt a sense of deja vu. He had seen Hide wear his headphones like that before, he knew it. Before that day, though, Hide had never worn them into the office. But it felt familiar: not just the headphones, but certain things about Hide. His smile and the way he leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers behind his head. Familiarity was not a common feeling for Haise. 

……

A week later, Haise sipped his coffee and drooped back in the booth. He, Hide, and Mutsuki had spent the entire night in the apartment sifting through boxes of old case files and all Haise wanted was a nap. After ending the Quinx Squad’s contribution to the Aogiri-related disappearance case with a spectacular insight on Hide’s part, they had picked up some awful, tedious cold case investigation. Life in one of the newest squads at the CCG usually meant getting completely shafted by the administration at all possible opportunities.

Hide smiled brightly at the waitress and she smiled back--genuinely--when she brought him another mug of coffee. 

“She’s cute,” Haise commented with a grin. “It kind of seems like she likes you. She’s always so nice to you when we’re in here.” 

“Wow, no, she doesn’t,” Hide replied when his bout of laughter died down. “I just kind of know her. But she’s...no, she is not into me.” He laughed again. There was something about him sitting there across from Haise, laughing, with his hands behind his head that felt so familiar. The waitress, too: when she stood beside Hide, they created an image Haise knew he had seen many times before.

……

  


Hide leaned against the kitchen counter.

“No, listen, there’s no way she was alive when they moved her body,” Hide argued. He always talked with his hands. He always filled up the room when he talked with all the gestures of his hands commanding attention.

“That doesn’t line up with the time of death,” Haise countered while he tapped coffee grounds into the French press. Excitedly discussing cases with Hide in the quinx apartment or at RE had become a common activity for them: Hide could make even the most boring, paperwork-heavy investigations interesting. He had a way of making everything seem like a mystery novel. 

Haise turned around to take the kettle from the stove and saw Hide standing there. Really, it wasn’t anything specific about Hide that triggered his memory. It was just his presence: the way his body filled the space around him; the way his smile filled the whole room. He was a human-shaped hole cut in a blank piece of paper. Light shone through him. At that moment everything became Hide or Not-Hide. 

“Have we…” Haise began, but his voice trailed off. His eyebrows came together. He could just see flashes. Hide at a coffee shop with his hair all bleached out. Hide, much younger, asleep in bed beside him. The two of them, teenagers, knee-deep in a cold lake. Vague strands of other memories appeared, too: a house, some faces, all hazy at the edges just like Hide was in those memories. Everything looked like a faded old Polaroid. 

“What’s wrong?” Hide asked. 

“Do I know you?” Haise managed. Hide’s lips parted slightly. He looked at Haise like he was looking at one of the Seven Wonders of the World. 

“What do you mean?” Hide asked cautiously. He turned to face Haise and moved a little closer to him. 

“I remember you. Right? Do you remember me?” Haise asked. He had never thought that remembering would be like this. It should have been dark and sudden and consuming, not half-faded and washed out with sunlight. He thought it would have been everything all at once but instead everything had holes. He couldn’t remember as much as he still forgot; he didn’t remember images or people so much as the feelings he associated with them. Friendship. Love. 

Hide cracked a smile and nodded furiously. He looked like he was about to cry, and Haise felt like he would, too. Emotion filled Haise in heavy waves that crashed in his torso and warmed his whole body.

Haise pulled Hide into a hug. Hide was crying into the fabric of his shirt and squeezing him so tightly he could barely breathe, but Haise didn’t mind--he could feel the warmth of Hide’s whole body pressed against his. 

“Did you know this whole time?” Haise asked. He had his arms slung around Hide’s neck and one hand in Hide’s hair. 

“Yeah I did. I didn’t want to tell you yet. I thought you seemed peaceful,” Hide explained. His voice was slightly hoarse with crying. “I’m so sorry.”

Haise pulled away so he could look Hide in the eye. He held the sides of Hide’s face.

“It’s fine, it’s not--I don’t blame you or anything,” Haise assured him. He studied all the lines and curves of Hide’s face and remembered how many times he had seen it before over so many years. He had seen Hide grow up; Hide had seen him grow up. “It’s just that you’re my best friend. I love you,” Haise said. Tears flowed freely down his cheeks. 

“I love you so much, Haise,” Hide replied. 

…..

Watching the light through the vibrant leaves was like looking at the sun through a jar of honey. The trees were so green they practically fluoresced in the afternoon light. 

Hide lounged with his arm draped over the back of the park bench. It was a day of hazy lethargy: a day when icy lemonade was the only appropriate beverage and there wasn’t an air conditioner in the city strong enough to cut through the humidity. Hide would have killed to drink a lemonade, but instead he and Haise sipped iced black coffees in plastic cups that sweated cool water into their palms.

“Do you remember that time we went out at night and sat on that statue and ate burgers?” Hide asked. His head lolled back on his shoulders and he watched Haise where he sat beside him. Since Haise had remembered, they touched more often: Haise would gently touch Hide’s back just to remind him of his presence; Hide would casually lean against Haise or rest his arm on the back of Haise’s chair. On the bench, Haise leaned back into Hide’s arm, and Hide’s fingers brushed absently against Haise’s bicep. 

“Not really,” Haise replied. “I remember that you liked burgers, though.” 

“Do you remember the time we stayed up all night at my house and then took the bikes out at sunrise, but the one you were borrowing had a flat tire so you just rode in the basket of mine?” Hide tried. During the week since Haise had first regained any of his memories, Hide had been filling him in on all the important parts of their friendship and answering any questions Haise had asked. Haise avoided questions about how he had come to work with the CCG; he explained to Hide that he was afraid of those memories coming back. In any case, they could afford to go slowly with the recollection. They had plenty of time.

“I do remember that,” Haise said with a grin. “I mean, I think so. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m remembering the event or just remembering what it felt like to do what you described.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes and took a sip from his coffee. 

“I know what you mean.” Hide looked out over the park. Couples in summer clothes walked with fingers linked and a group of kids blew strings of shimmering silver bubbles into the still air. “You know, we probably shouldn’t tell Arima that you’re remembering this stuff. That we both are, actually,” Hide remarked. “Like, we decided we’d hold off telling anyone anyway, but I think we shouldn’t tell him. It’s not safe.”

Haise looked at Hide seriously. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t know what they’d do to us if they knew.” Hide comfortingly rubbed the pads of his fingers over Haise’s skin. Haise was still frowning.

“But for now,” Hide interjected brightly, “let’s go back to the apartment. It has air conditioning and movies.” He hopped up and offered Haise his hand. Haise took it but jerked his hand back. 

“Ew, your hand is all sweaty,” he complained with a wrinkled nose. Hide rolled his eyes and leaned down to whisper in Haise’s ear.

“You eat people!” he hissed. Haise smacked him on the arm. 

…..

The credits rolled all the way to a black screen and Hide switched the TV off with the remote. The sun had gone down at the end of the first movie and by the time the second one ended, Hide had sprawled out on the couch with his head in Haise’s lap. Akira was out of her apartment for the night, and Hide and Haise decided to take the opportunity to have a movie night at Hide’s place where they wouldn’t cause the usual disruption to the quinxes’ Xbox schedule. Neither of them had mentioned that it was quite a lot like a date, especially with the lights off in the living room and the two of them curled up on the couch together.

Haise ran his fingers aimlessly through Hide’s hair. His legs were warm under Hide’s head and Hide titled his chin back slightly so he could look at Haise upside-down. 

“Hide, I have a question,” Haise began hesitantly.

“Yeah?”

“Did we ever...kiss or anything? When we were younger?” Hide immediately blushed and pushed himself up to a seat. 

“Um, no, we didn’t,” Hide answered. “Um...why do you ask?” 

“It just seems like it would have made sense.” Haise was looking directly at Hide with his eyes wide and his lips slightly parted. He looked beautiful: all elegant lines and gray eyes and the messy sweep of his white hair. Hide probably just looked startled. 

Cool fingers rested on Hide’s knee. Haise shifted forward slightly on the couch. 

“Do you want to…” Hide began. Haise nodded.

One of them must have initiated the movement, but they’d always remember it as if they both leaned in a the same time and their lips met perfectly equidistant from where their heads had been. 

Their first kiss was hard and clumsy as they pressed together with all the combined urgency of years. Heat built up in their bodies and washed over their skin as, in tandem, they pushed the pace faster. Haise opened his mouth and Hide slipped his tongue against Haise’s. His hands cupped Haise’s head; they kissed desperately. Haise pressed forward towards Hide and clutched his face. On their lips he could taste the rushing urgency to touch more; to kiss more; to reclaim lost time. Haise couldn’t figure out why they had never done this before--Hide was the most obvious person; of course he’d want to kiss him.

His hands fumbled against Hide’s neck and and the sides of his face and into his hair, trying to make as much contact as possible. Their kisses were sloppy collisions of lips and tongues and their touches were hard and warm and clutching. The thought that eclipsed the rest of Haise’s mind was the desire to hold Hide for as long as he was physically capable. Haise tried to move forward on his knees and one of his thighs pressed into the growing erection between Hide’s legs.

“Shit, sorry!” Haise exclaimed, drawing back from the kiss. 

“No, it’s fine. If you want to...go further, I do too,” Hide replied hesitantly. He was blushing bright red. Fuck, of course he wanted to go further. He had wanted to go further with Haise since they were seventeen.

“I do,” Haise said quickly. Hide grinned and kissed him hard, then looped an arm around Haise’s waist and guided their bodies together. 

“Is this alright?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Haise breathed. He kissed Hide and with the motion pushed him back into the cushions. He pressed down on top of Hide, who was grinning furiously. He cupped Haise’s face and kissed him deeply. 

“I love you,” Hide panted against Haise’s mouth, and Haise felt a shock of heat in his belly. “I love you,” he repeated. Haise cut off the end of the last word with a fierce kiss and trailed his hands down Hide’s sides. 

“I love you, too,” Haise murmured. He could feel Hide’s dick growing hard against the inside of his hip and he brushed his hand over it lightly.

“Is that--” Haise began.

“Yeah!” Hide exclaimed. “Should we go into my room or something?” 

“No, here,” Haise responded desperately. They had waited long enough. He pushed his hands under Hide’s shirt. Hide’s skin warmed his cold hands as he gripped Hide’s waist with one hand and dragged the other up his chest, fingers pressing tight into Hide’s skin. Ribs stood up faintly on Hide’s sides and Haise could feel the rise-and-fall of his chest as he breathed hard. 

Hide twisted his fingers into Haise’s hair and trailed his fingernails lightly along his scalp, eliciting a pleased hum from Haise. They kissed sloppily, their lips and tongues colliding hard. Hide traced his fingers down the muscles of Haise’s back, then gripped his ass. In response Haise grinded down against him, trying to get their bodies closer as if pressing together, lying on top of each other, couldn’t be enough--like it would only be enough to merge their outlines in a tangled union of warmth. 

The hem of Haise’s shirt squirmed out of the hem of his pants and bunched up between them. Haise pushed himself up on his knees and clumsily unbuttoned his shirt. Hide’s fingers gripped tightly as he ran his hands up Haise’s thighs to his hips. When Haise looked down, he saw that Hide’s cheeks were flushed red, his lips slightly parted, and his left eye had gone black and red. Haise pulled off his undershirt as one of Hide’s hands went to the crotch of his pants. Hide felt the outline of Haise’s dick and Haise’s hips twitched in response. 

“Please,” Haise breathed, and Hide’s hand went immediately to the button of his pants; Haise squirmed out of them and tossed aside. He draped his body over Hide’s again and kissed him hungrily. One of Hide’s legs was between his and Haise’s dick pressed against their stomachs. Hide’s teeth nipped at his bottom lip.

“Fuck, Haise, you look so good,” Hide mumbled into the kiss. Hide cupped Haise’s ass with one hand and grabbed his hip with the other, then pulled Haise to grind down against him. Haise moaned against Hide’s mouth and tightened his fist in the fabric of Hide’s shirt. Their bodies bumped together in a slow, jerky rhythm guided by Hide’s hands on Haise’s ass. 

Haise dropped his face into the crook of Hide’s neck and left wet kisses in a line from collarbone to ear. He could feel Hide’s erection, still under his pants, pressing against him. The warmth and pressure in Haise’s body swelled up and he grinded hard down against Hide, who let out a low whine.

“Haise,” Hide breathed, like he just wanted to try out the name. His breath was warm on Haise’s ear. Haise’s hands grasped tightly into Hide’s shirt to stop them from shaking as Haise got closer to his orgasm. His teeth scratched at Hide’s neck when he moaned, open-mouthed and messy. He moaned again and that time it was Hide’s name, long and drawn-out and shaking into the quiet of the apartment. Haise grinded down into Hide a few more times and then his hips bucked down, pressing forcefully into Hide. Haise’s muscles tensed, his arms trembling beneath him, as he came into his boxers.

Only their quiet breathing filled the apartment for a moment. Hide combed a hand through Haise’s hair as Haise breathed slowly against his throat, limbs gone slack and body limp. A breeze from the open window cooled the sweat on Haise’s back and Hide pressed a kiss to his forehead. 

Haise shifted up and knelt on the couch again. The skin of Hide’s torso showed where his shirt had been rucked up over his navel and his collar had turned up in the back. His eye was still black shot with red and he looked absolutely awed. Haise couldn’t help but smile.

“Let’s go in there,” Haise whispered with a gesture of his head towards Hide’s bedroom. He took Hide’s hand and led him across to the bedroom. The wooden floor cooled their feet. 

“You’re sure?” Hide asked, and Haise nodded in response. 

Hide didn’t take his eyes off of Haise. He let Haise tug him along toward the room and watched the way the light brushed his body: the shadow flat against his cheek; the glint of the lamplight on the fullest part of his lips; the way his hair darkened to gray and black in the dimness. Before they even reached the door Hide pulled Haise into a long, heavy kiss. He could feel Haise’s body relaxing against him as their lips pressed together. They barely broke the kisses to stumble into the dark bedroom. 

Once the door had closed, Hide’s fingers hooked into Haise’s wet boxers and pulled them down so they dropped to the floor. Haise fumbled with Hide’s shirt and Hide with his own pants until they collapsed against each other on the cool sheets. Hide rolled on top of Haise and began trailing kisses down his chest and stomach and then paused to nibble at the insides of his thighs. Whatever the hell Haise tasted like, it was awesome. Hide lingered at Haise’s hips and thighs until Haise cupped the back of his head and drew him into another kiss.

The motion of Haise’s hand between them prompted Hide to lift his hips. Haise experimentally brushed his thumb over the head of Hide’s dick, damp with precome; Hide exhaled sharply. Hide watched as Haise brought his hand to his mouth and luxuriously licked the pad of his thumb clean. He kept his gaze on Hide the whole time.

“Holy fucking shit,” Hide breathed. “I want you so bad,” he grinned and Haise couldn’t help but do the same. 

“Do you have lube?” Haise asked calmly.

“Oh my god! How are you so casual about that?” 

“I’m hoping that if I act casual I won’t look like as much of a mess as I am,” Haise laughed. 

“It’s okay, I’m also a big mess. You’re making me a mess,” Hide assured. He brushed the hair from Haise’s forehead. 

“So, do you want to use the lube?” Haise prompted.

“Right! Yes, I do.” Hide rolled off of Haise and scrambled to the bedside table. The drawer contained a mostly-full bottle of lube, condoms, a half-empty pack of gum, and a fuckload of papers covered in various colors of ink. Hide pulled out the relevant stuff and brought it over to where Haise lay on the bed. Hide kissed Haise gently. 

“This is okay?” Hide asked.

“Yeah,” Haise responded with an enthusiastic nod. What a dork. 

Hide knelt between Haise’s legs and squirted lube onto his fingers. He dipped his hand down to Haise’s ass. Haise arched his back up off the bed when Hide pressed a finger inside of him. His dick was getting hard again and Hide stroked him slowly a few times with his other hand. The combined sensations of Hide’s fingers inside him and on his dick forced a moan out of his chest. Hide smiled; Haise didn’t seem particularly talkative in bed, but Hide wanted to make him loud. 

Hide pressed in another finger and crooked it as he pulled out. A sudden tremble through Haise’s thighs told him he’d found the right spot. Hide braced himself on an elbow so he could lie down over Haise and finger him at the same time. He built a rhythm sliding two fingers in and out of Haise until he relaxed enough that he could add another. Haise’s body shook with the pleasure of three of Hide’s fingers filling him. 

“Thats--that’s probably good,” Haise sighed. 

“You’re sure?” Hide asked. He pulled his fingers out. 

“Yeah, you should get a condom,” Haise replied. Hide moved the lube bottle and the foil packet he had left on the bed towards Haise. Haise took Hide’s wrist and directed him to sit at the top of the bed. 

Hide sat up against the pillows with Haise straddling his lap. Haise tore open the condom packet and slid it down over Hide’s dick. He made sure to linger as he pulled his hand away and reached for the lube. He pumped some onto his palm and stroked Hide. 

“Are you alright?” Haise whispered. He continued to jerk off Hide teasingly slow. Despite his pace, Hide wouldn’t last much longer if Haise kept up what he was doing.

“Yeah, definitely. You?” Hide responded through his ragged breathing. He held on to Haise’s hips. 

“Yeah,” Haise said. He lowered his hips and guided Hide’s dick to his entrance. Hide held his breath when the tip of his dick pressed against Haise’s entrance. 

“Oh my god Haise,” Hide moaned as Haise first sank down around him. He just took the tip and then pulled back up, only to sink down again. After a couple more slow shifts up and down, Hide was all the way inside him. Haise grinded down hard on Hide’s dick and only half concealed his groan. Hide held tight to Haise’s hips and moaned with his lips on Haise’s chest. “You’re amazing,” Hide panted against his skin.

Haise tangled his fingers into Hide’s hair and Hide lifted his face for a kiss. Haise pushed up on his knees and slowly lowered down, filling himself with Hide’s dick. When he reached the base, Haise clasped his hand to his mouth to catch his moan.

“You can make noise--ah, fuck--if you want,” Hide managed. “No one’s around.”

Haise’s breath caught into a moan as Hide closed his hand around Haise’s dick and jerked his hand up to the tip. Haise’s mouth opened into a neat O and he squeezed his eyes shut. He grasped at Hide’s hair and dug his fingernails into Hide’s shoulder. 

In retaliation, Haise shifted his hips up until only Hide’s tip remained inside him. With Haise pushing his body and forward, Hide could drag his tongue over Haise’s chest and then up to his neck. Haise dropped all the way back down. He pressed his lips against Hide’s to catch the noises he made. 

They rocked against each other, lips and tongues colliding in messy kisses when Haise bobbed downward on Hide’s dick. Hide jerked off Haise roughly to the timing of his up-and-down movements with a shaky hand. The only things left in the room were the feeling of Haise around him and the wet pressure of their lips against each other. Hide picked up the pace of his strokes as Haise began moving more frantically.

“Ah, Hide,” Haise moaned. 

“Yeah, let me hear you,” Hide encouraged with his lips pressed to Haise’s neck. His hot breath raised goosebumps on Haise’s skin. 

“You feel really good,” Haise breathed, “inside me.” 

Hide nearly choked on his spit. He jerked his hips up as Haise pressed down and they both moaned. Hide 

“Hide, I’m close, please,” Haise groaned. His hands gripped desperately at Hide’s hair. Hide thrust his hips up again and Haise dropped down to meet his body. 

“Haise,” Hide moaned out as he came. He clutched at Haise’s waist with his free hand, nails pressing into his back, and stroked Haise’s dick hard and fast. He looked up and watched Haise open his mouth wide and tip his head back as he came, shuddering, on Hide’s chest. 

Haise relaxed against Hide’s body. Once their breathing slowed and quieted Hide gave Haise a soft, warm kiss. Haise broke the kiss to move off of Hide’s dick and collapse onto the bed. He looked up at Hide sleepily. Hide jumped up to throw away the condom and clean himself off in the adjacent bathroom. He hurried back to the bed and flopped down beside Haise. 

“It’s cold,” Haise murmured. 

“Then get under the blankets!” Hide chided. He pulled back the sheets and the two of them crawled underneath. “I’m gonna be honest, that was awesome.” He draped his arm over Haise’s waist. Haise had curled his arms up against his chest and Hide was filled with the desire to hug him as tightly as possible for a very long time--potentially for hours if they could make it work. 

Haise laughed and brushed his fingers along Hide’s chest. He watched their passage across Hide’s skin as if he were tracking a shooting star through the night sky. 

“You’re just as silly as I remember,” he whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao if y'all made it this far in the fic you deserve the smut <3


	13. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We have not been given all the words necessary.  
> We have not been given anything at all.  
> We’ve been driving all night. We’ve been driving a long time.  
> We want to stop. We can’t.  
> Is there an acceptable result? Do we mean something when we talk?  
> Is it enough that we are shuddering  
> from the sound?
> 
> -Richard Siken, ["The Dislocated Room"](http://crushedfingers.tumblr.com/post/390864422/the-dislocated-room-richard-siken)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some explicit eye horror. It's under the first "..." break and ends at the next break--I tried to space it out enough to give a warning.

It had been a week.  
They called Yoriko’s mother. Yoriko took RCC suppressants and Touka took the train with her back to the house.  
Yoriko talked to the police. She had been picked up by a couple of people in masks; she couldn’t remember what happened between then and when she woke up on the street and limped to Touka’s apartment because she knew it was nearby. Hide would take care of relaying the actual information to the CCG so Touka and Yoriko wouldn’t risk being found out to be ghouls. He’d cook up some premium bullshit, Touka was sure.  
Yoriko made excuses and spent the nights at Touka’s apartment. It wasn’t safe for her to stay at home and it wasn’t safe for her to go back to school yet. They slept in Touka’s bed every night: Yoriko snuggled up against Touka’s back and warmed Touka as she was falling asleep. 

On that seventh morning Touka awoke to Yoriko leaning up against a pillow where the mattress met the wall. She wore one of Touka’s old Kamii sweatshirts and the sunlight glittered on the gold highlights in her hair. 

“Good morning,” Yoriko whispered hoarsely. Touka mumbled something incoherent in response and rubbed her eyes. When she looked back up, she realized Yoriko had been crying. Touka sat up and scooted up the bed.

“What’s wrong?” Touka asked. Yoriko looked out the window and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“I was in school to be a chef,” she said. “Now I can’t even taste my own food.” Yoriko laughed bitterly through her tears. “It’s stupid. I should be glad just to be alive. I shouldn’t be complaining about this.” 

Touka moved closer to Yoriko and slowly extended her hand, pausing before she touched Yoriko’s shoulder to make sure it was okay. Yoriko nodded and Touka put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close.

“Fuck that,” Touka said. “It’s not stupid. You’re allowed to be sad about your life getting screwed up.”

Yoriko choked on a laugh through her crying. “It’s just that this wasn’t how things were supposed to go,” she continued. “You know, you see stuff on the news about people getting kidnapped or killed by ghouls, but you never think it’s going to be you. It’s always someone else. Until it isn’t, I guess.” Yoriko wiped at her eyes with the sweatshirt. 

Yoriko just wanted to go home. Not in a literal sense: she liked being there with Touka; she needed to be, and she didn’t want to endanger her family. She wanted to go home; to the concept of home that meant safety and warmth and benevolent routine. Something that wasn’t so uncertain; something that would just stop changing. 

Touka just carded her fingers through Yoriko’s hair. It smelled like Touka’s own shampoo. 

“Sorry,” Yoriko mumbled.

“For what?” Touka asked in alarm.

“For making it sound like it’s so bad to be a ghoul.”

“Being a ghoul sucks,” Touka replied with a smile. “At least, being hunted all the time by the Doves sucks. Being criminals just by living sucks. No matter how much we try to be peaceful it’s never enough for them. That’s what sucks.”

Yoriko snorted. “I miss cheesecake, too,” she said. She leaned her head into Touka’s chest and listened to the slow beat of her heart. “You were always just pretending to like my food.”

“Sorry,” Touka said. “I really appreciated it. That you cared to do it.” No one had ever really cared to do things like that for her. 

“Maybe you should’ve just told me,” Yoriko said. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

“You were terrified of ghouls!” Touka countered.

“That’s fair, I guess,” Yoriko mumbled into the fabric of Touka’s shirt. “But I wouldn’t have been scared of you.” 

Touka pressed her lips to the top of Yoriko’s head. Yoriko’s crying had calmed and she exhaled shakily; her breath ghosted over the skin exposed by Touka’s v-neck shirt. 

  


…..

  


Yoriko leaned towards the mirror and gently pulled down the lower lid of her right eye. The damp inside of the fragile lid flushed red with irritation. Yoriko’s other eye had gone black and red with the pain and stress of waking up at four in the morning with her eye crusted shut by lurid yellow pus and brown blood. 

Yoriko hissed in pain and surprise when she saw the smooth strip of keratin that sprouted at the seam where her eyeball met her eyelid. Sweat dampened her back and her left hand shook against the porcelain counter. She pressed her fingertips into the cool, smooth surface and clenched her jaw. The URC kagune, being an experimental procedure carried out in a dark, illegal, and quite literally subterranean laboratory, was unstable not just when it came to control but also when it came to structure itself. The URC tissue always regenerated, fortunately, but the kagune sometimes left behind traces of itself nestled in Yoriko’s body.

It would have required enough RCC suppressants to make Yoriko’s organs collapse in on themselves to completely curb the nocturnal wanderings of her kagune. At the moment of examining the fingernails growing into her cornea, major organ failure was an attractive outcome.

Well, Yoriko thought bitterly, at least the wounds would heal. 

Yoriko switched hands and held her eyelids open with her left hand. With her right, she picked up a pair of tweezers from the counter and forced the tips around the nail before she could hesitate. The cold metal of the tweezers pressed against her eye and what vision remained in her right eye hazed over with gray. Yoriko held her grip firmly on the tweezers and began to peel the thin layer of keratin out of her eye. Hot pain twisted down from her eye into her chest and stomach and arms until her whole body was a knot of stinging discomfort. Blood pooled in her eyelid and dripped down her cheek. Yoriko yanked out the rest of the nail as quickly as she could; the tissue and the tweezers clattered into the sink as her hands spasmed away from her face. The blood from the torn nail and streaming from Yoriko’s eye streaked the counter and oozed down the drain. 

The pink-red irritation was already fading. The cornea knitted itself back together. 

Yoriko cleaned the tweezers and the sink. The fingernail disappeared down the drain.

Yoriko washed her hands. She had endured worse. 

….. 

  


Yoriko didn’t blush when Touka changed in their shared room or walked around the house in a bra and a pair of boxer briefs. She liked it, really. They were falling into routines that were simultaneously old and new. Rather than bringing her homemade lunch to Touka, Yoriko made coffee for the two of them. They shared stories from the time they had been apart just like they had swapped gossip in high school, except they talked half-sprawled across each other on Touka’s couch rather than in the library or the lunchroom. 

Touka’s favorite role-reversal prompted by their--temporary? she began to hope not--lodging situation was that she taught Yoriko how to make coffee. Touka kept eight different kinds of beans in her house, a drip coffee maker, a French press, and a good-old-fashioned electric coffee maker for the times when exhaustion trumped quality. With her knack for cooking, Yoriko was a natural in making coffee, but Touka was still better. RE didn’t run itself, after all. 

One afternoon when Touka had dropped her evening shift on a new barista they had just hired, she and Yoriko were making iced coffee in the kitchen. The apartment’s air conditioning had noisily sputtered to a stop after about half an hour of function that morning--even with the windows open and two fans whirring air into the room, sweat dampened Touka’s hairline and beaded at her back. The humidity outside was so heavy that Touka felt like she could sip warm water straight from the air and the temperature oozed up towards triple digits.

“Still not as good as yours,” Yoriko grumbled. 

“It’s really good though,” Touka replied with a smile, and Yoriko beamed. Yoriko was perched on the linoleum countertop, drumming her heels against the cabinets below her. Sweat sheened between her breasts and she had pulled back her long hair in a messy, tangled bun. 

“You know, I would have dated you in high school. If you asked,” Yoriko admitted suddenly. A blush rose on her cheeks, but Touka was certainly redder. Her eyes went wide and she was very aware of all the sweat on her body.

“I would date you,” she blurted. Yoriko grinned. When they kissed, Yoriko’s lips and tongue were cool from drinking the iced coffee. She tasted like espresso and her thighs were warm under Touka’s hands.


	14. Tiktaalik

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's time for romcom tropes B)
> 
> edit: I was also notified by the very sweet user Icepool that i accidentally skipped from Akira's apartment to Haise's apartment in this chapter, which is true, because I left too much time between updating :'). apologies! please try to ignore that.

Hide leaned against the sink in only his boxers and picked at the skin that had grown on his shoulders during the night: a thin layer of hairless kagune flesh that formed a rough-edged patch over his natural skin. In the night, part of his kagune must have crept out and left some skin behind. It was routine enough. He lifted the edge of the patch and began to pull it away like a band-aid. The kagune had anchored itself only shallowly in his skin, so the removal was easier than peeling away natural skin, but blood still beaded on his shoulder.

The skin came off in a damp, bloody flap. He dropped it in the bathroom trash can and rinsed off his shoulder and arm. Hide had been such a stupid experiment; they all were, the half-ghouls and quinxes and shapeshifters. The CCG had been stupid to play at resurrection just to convert humans into weapons. None of them ever turned out right. None of them had been anything besides exploited.

Hide looked at himself in the mirror and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t supposed to have happened. He remembered hearing about “transitional forms” in school one time--the evolutionary stepping stones that lead to modern-day creatures. The teacher had showed the class a picture of what looked like a fish with legs: a tiktaalik, an animal halfway between sea creatures and land animals. Hide, too, lived and died as a bridge to a final, perfect being. He wondered how long it would take for creatures like him to go extinct by the artificial selection of the CCG.

Back in the bedroom, Haise stirred in the sheets. Hide looked over his shoulder and, through the open door of the en suite, could see his white-streaked black hair mussed across the pillows. Haise was lying on his stomach with one pale arm crooked above his head and the other bent at his side, and Hide was struck by wonder that they hadn’t done this ages ago. He had loved Haise for so long. 

Hide dried his hands on a towel and padded back to the bed. Haise mumbled and tried to roll to accommodate Hide, but he got caught on his arm and ended up tipping back towards him. Rather than scooting away, Hide curled around Haise, their hips and chests pressed together, and fell back asleep breathing in the smell of Haise’s skin. 

  
.....  


Haise woke to a voice from outside his bedroom. At some point during the night Hide had ended up spooning him, and he would much rather have stayed tucked in the warm curve of Hide’s body than gotten up to see which quinx wanted what.

“Hey, Sassan! Whose clothes are these?” Shirazu hollered from the living room. “I’ll bring them to your room, okay!” he continued. 

Haise jumped from the bed and managed to grab the doorknob before Shirazu could turn it. The knob rattled in his hand. If Shirazu got the door open, he’d have caught an eyeful of his naked superior, plus the more-than-half-naked guy sleeping in his bed.  
“Sassan?” Shirazu asked. Haise felt like he was in a horror movie, waiting for the zombie to bust through the door.

“Just a second,” Haise replied frantically. 

“All right,” Shirazu grumbled. Haise heard his footsteps moving away from the bedroom door and turned away to face Hide. He sat on the bed cross-legged with his hand pressed to his lips to quell his laughter. Haise could see the edges of his smile twitching at his cheeks. 

“I feel like a teenager,” Haise whispered. “They’re supposed to be my kids, not the other way around.” 

“Your kids?” Hide asked. It looked like he was struggling even more to keep from laughing. 

“My--yes, my kids,” Haise admitted, thinking of Saiko and the nickname she had given him. 

Hide smiled and gestured for Haise to join him on the bed again. Haise climbed onto the bed and knelt in front of Hide. Warmth radiated from Hide’s skin where he touched Haise: his cheek with delicate fingers, the back of his neck, and then Hide’s lips on Haise’s throat. Haise exhaled slowly as he tipped his head back and let his eyes close. He had slept in that day, if the quinxes already being awake was any indication, but he was still exhausted. 

“We’ll have to...mm...get you out of my room without them noticing,” Haise breathed. Hide still worked his lips slowly over Haise’s neck and shoulders and massaged Haise’s scalp with his fingers.

“Yeah?” Hide mumbled against Haise’s skin. Haise groaned a little louder than he should have.

“Sorry...work…” he replied arduously. “As much as I wish we could stay here.” Hide drew away from Haise, but left one hand on the back of his neck. He paused and looked at Haise with a smile under his brown eyes. Haise smiled back.

“We were stupid for not doing this earlier,” Hide said.

“What? Having sex?” Haise teased.

“No! I mean…” Hide began, but he couldn’t think of exactly what to say. “This! This thing--” he waved his hands between them, gesturing back and forth. “You know what I mean,” he concluded.

“Yes, I do,” Haise whispered. They remained silent for a moment, looking at each other, before Haise remembered that they needed to get Hide out of there. “Hide, do you remember the time when you came to my house that one night but you weren’t supposed to, so you had to climb out the window and go down the fire escape?” Haise asked.

Hide sighed and slumped his shoulders dramatically, but then he was up and dressing from the pile of his clothes on the bedroom floor. Thankfully, none of Hide’s clothes had ended up where the quinxes could find them, and Haise wouldn’t have to explain why men’s clothing two sizes too big was littered across the couch. It would be marginally easier to explain why he had stripped in the living room. 

Once Hide had dressed and smoothed out his clothes to some level of neatness, he stood by the window and looked out nervously. Haise stood beside him, finally clothed in boxer briefs and an undershirt, and appraised the distance from his window to the ground. 

“Oh, it’s only the second story. You could jump and you’d be fine,” Haise assured.

“Ugh,” Hide grumbled again, but he had always been terrible at hiding his smiles. He pulled the window open and stepped out onto the rusty fire escape. The two terra cotta pots of marigolds that Haise kept there rattled against each other. “Flowers! That’s so cute. That’s ridiculously cute,” he exclaimed now that he was out the window and felt like he could speak at his usual boisterous volume. 

“Shh! They might still hear you,” Haise hissed back. Hide grinned and leaned through the window for a goodbye kiss, which silenced Haise’s next admonishment. 

“Love you,” Hide whispered, and then he was gone down the iron steps. Seconds later he heard the slap of shoes on concrete as Hide dropped onto the sidewalk. Haise ducked his head out the window and waved at Hide as he walked away backwards. Hide waved back and kept waving, still walking backwards, until he stumbled on the sidewalk and resigned himself to walking in the proper direction. Haise laughed.

The door slammed open and Haise nearly smacked his head on the window in surprise.

“Maman! Shirazu told me to get you!” Saiko exclaimed from the doorway. She was ready to go in her white trench coat, and Haise was still in his underwear. 

“All right! Tell him I’m coming, I’ll be out in a second. Just...get out!” Haise replied as he shooed Saiko from his room and closed his door. As he quickly dressed for work, the idea of spending the day in bed with Hide seemed more and more attractive.


	15. Acceptable Result

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,   
> like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones. 
> 
> -Jeffrey McDaniel, "The Archipelago of Kisses"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah wow, i can't believe i'm finally finishing this fic. I'm so grateful to everyone who has read and commented and especially those who have been around since day one. I'd like to give a special shoutout to [Kammy](archiveofourown.org/users/Kammy) for inspiring this fic, as well as [Icepool](archiveofourown.org/users/Icepool) for the amazing support. Also, I'm forever in debt to the LitSin group chat (Kammy, [Kamu](archiveofourown.org/users/Kamu), [UnusuallyNormal](archiveofourown.org/users/UnusuallyNormal), and hotpantsdlc on Tumblr) for motivating me to keep writing.

Yoriko took Touka’s hand when they neared the coffee shop. Touka looked at Yoriko in surprise for a moment, but didn’t shake her off. Years ago she hadn’t been a fan of any physical contact at all. Yoriko liked this development. Touka unlocked the front door with the one hand not holding Yoriko’s and stepped into the quiet dimness of the empty shop. Yomo had been mostly taking care of :RE while Touka had been busy with Yoriko, but he had finally asked Touka to begin opening the shop again. She didn’t blame him: pulling six-in-the-morning shifts every day for weeks was a trying experience. 

Touka left the door unlocked for the early-early-morning regulars while she put water on to boil. She tasked Yoriko with wiping down counters and restocking napkins for the day. Her small hands worked quickly but Touka noticed a slight shake in her fingers. Tremors were a side-effect of the RCC suppressants. Hopefully they would be able to wean Yoriko off of them soon, but they had discussed the matter and neither of them were confident that it was an option in the near future. When Touka passed by the table Yoriko was cleaning, she paused and put her chin on Yoriko’s shoulder. 

No one was in the shop yet, so Touka hooked her arms around Yoriko’s waist and gently kissed her neck. She felt Yoriko shiver under her lips. 

“This disgusting regular will be in soon,” Touka murmured into the curve of Yoriko’s neck. She didn’t need to tell Yoriko anything in particular; she just wanted to hear Yoriko talk. Her voice soothed Touka. “He likes to flirt with me. He’s so old.”

“I’ll protect you from him,” Yoriko joked. She lifted her right arm and flexed her tiny, unmuscular bicep. 

“He’s a human. He’d piss himself if he knew we were ghouls,” Touka grinned. 

“I think he’s here,” Yoriko whispered back. Touka looked up and saw a middle-aged man in a gray business suit a few steps from the door. Touka jumped back from Yoriko, but she felt Yoriko’s hand brush her lower back as she headed towards the cash register.

Eight-thirty in the morning came after two and a half hours of slow business, and with it came the rush of businesspeople, students, and CCG investigators buying coffee to start their day. Touka split her time between glancing at Yoriko and watching the door to see if Kaneki would be there, but as people filtered through and nine o’clock approached he had yet to arrive. Kaneki didn’t run late. 

But maybe this new man did. The morning rush had cleared from the coffee shop by the time Hide opened the door for his companion. Touka may have been imagining it, but she thought that they glanced lovingly at each other more often than they had since they were nineteen.

Touka expected the wave from Hide, but she hardly anticipated Kaneki’s determined stride towards the cash register. Touka came from around the counter and noticed that Kaneki was smiling more broadly than she had seen in years.

“Touka,” he said as he approached her. “I remember! I remember you!”

Touka opened her mouth slightly in surprise and then a moment later she was hugging Kaneki. He wore the white coat of a CCG invetigator, and his dark hair was growing back in, and he smelled just like he always had: half-ghoul, half-human.

“Kaneki,” she said with her cheek resting on his shoulder. “It’s been so long, you idiot.”

In the end they were stepping stones. They were transitional forms. But even the tiktaalik with its inherent incapability to survive died with its own blood: an entire dynasty of half-formed, half-living creatures rotting together under the soil of the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! if you like my writing please consider checking out my original work-- ortegariekpoetry.tumblr.com!


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